The results of the Plurilateral Patent Prosecution Highway Working-Level Meeting

The Plurilateral Patent Prosecution Highway (Plurilateral PPH) Meeting was held in Tokyo on May 18 and 19. Working-level officials of intellectual property offices and organizations in 15 countries/regions, including Japan, the USA, Korea, and the U.K., participated and discussed efforts to standardize requirements and procedures for the Patent Prosecution Highway (PPH) program.

They took a major step toward the establishment of the basic framework for the Plurilateral PPH by reaching a general agreement on the sharing of the PPH application format, the construction of a portal site for one-stop access to PPH-related information, and the standardization of some of the PPH requirements, including machine translation.

Background

In the globalizing economy, more and more inventors are filing duplicate applications in many different countries, forcing patent offices to seriously consider how to deal with the growing workload for examiners.

Under these circumstances, the JPO has been promoting with each office the PPH, a bilateral framework whereby the office of second filing refers to the examination results of the applications determined to be patentable in the office of the first filing, thus implementing accelerated examination.

The JPO is also considering activities to further improve the usability of the PPH from its users’ viewpoint, including the standardization of requirements and procedures for the PPH among different patent offices.

This Working-Level Meeting was organized to hold discussion on the standardization of requirements and procedures for the PPH, which was decided on at the first Plurilateral PPH Meeting at the heads of office level and the working level in February 2009.

China, Brazil and others attended the Working-Level Meeting as observers, showing the rise of international interest in the PPH program.

Participants

Japan, Canada, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Korea, Russia, Singapore, the U.K., USA, European Patent Office (EPO)

Observers

Brazil, Hungary, China, World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO)
(15 countries/regions/organizations in total)

Outline of the meeting results

The Plurilateral Patent Prosecution Highway (Plurilateral PPH) Meeting at the working level was held in Tokyo on May 18 and 19 under the auspices of the JPO with the attendance of intellectual property offices and organizations of 15 main countries/regions (the intellectual property offices in these countries/regions received 1.55 million applications in 2006, accounting for about 90% of the total number of applications worldwide, 1.76 million).

At the meeting, the participants discussed and agreed on the following points and decided to make detailed arrangements for the meeting at the heads of office level in September.

- A common application format to be used for PPH applications in different countries should be developed in line with the proposal by the JPO.

- The JPO will construct a portal site that provides one-stop access to PPH-related information, including guidelines of each PPH and statistical data.

- The use of machine translation should be accepted in translating office actions, such as the Notification of Reason for Refusal, which applicants need to submit when requesting accelerated examination under the PPH.

Release Date

May 20, 2009

Division in Charge

Examination Policy Planning Office, First Patent Examination Department, Japan Patent Office International Affairs Division, General Affairs Department, Japan Patent Office

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