Patent Prosecution Highway (PPH)
PPH means Patent Prosecution Highway. It is a cooperative program between the participating foreign offices to expedite the allowance of patent applications that previously received favorable rulings.
Under PPH, participating patent offices have agreed that when an applicant receives a final ruling from a first patent office that at least one claim is allowed, the applicant may request fast track examination of the corresponding claim(s) in a corresponding patent application that is pending in a second patent office.
PPH leverages fast-track examination procedures already in place among participating patent offices to allow applicants to reach final disposition of a patent application more quickly and efficiently than standard examination processing.
The PPH is a successful way to accelerate Patent Prosecution Procedures by sharing patent search and examination results. This agreement, which takes place between two patent offices, it allows one patent office to reuse search and examination results conducted by other patent offices, thereby benefitting from this agreement by eliminating wastage of any time and effort for proper complete search and examination of patent applications.
Participants in PPH schemes are:
* Canadian IP Office and USPTO
* Danish Patent and Trademark Office and Japan Patent Office (JPO)
* DKPTO –USPTO
* European Patent Office (EPO) – USPTO
* EPO-JPO
* IP Australia (IPAU) – USPTO
* JPO – USPTO
* JPO – Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO)
* JPO- UK-IPO
* JPO- German Patent and Trademark Office
* JPO- Malaysian Intellectual Property Office (MYIPO)
* JPO- National Board of Patents and Registration of Finland (PRH)
* KIPO- USPTO
* Taiwan Intellectual Property Office (TIPO) – USPTO
* UK-IPO- USPTO
* Israel Patent Office (ILPO) – USPTO
PPH in USPTO:
In USPTO under PPH, an applicant receiving a ruling from the office of first filing (OFF) that at least one claim in an application filed in the OFF is patentable may request that the office of Second Filing (OSF) fast-track the examination of corresponding claims in corresponding applications filed in the OSF. Under the PPH program, the US application must come from the route of either the Paris convention or the Patent Co-operation Treaty after filing the priority application. Such an application must have at least one claim which was declared patentable at the office of first filing. The claims of the US application as originally filed or as amended must sufficiently correspond to one or more of the allowed claims in the office of first filing.
PPH in India:
At the Japan- India summit meeting on Oct 29, 2018, the leaders of Japan and India concurred to start a bilateral PPH program on a pilot basis in certain identified folds of the invention in the first quarter of the fiscal year 2019. Under the program, Japanese companies can request expedited examinations in India through simplified procedures based on their applications whose claims have been determined to be patentable in Japan. Also, after claims have been determined to be patentable in Japan, applicants can acquire patents swiftly and expand their business smoothly in India.
With India’s increasing participation in cooperative mechanisms like the Patent Prosecution Highway, the role of PPH is no longer limited to procedural acceleration alone. It is also expected to influence how patent examination systems evolve in terms of efficiency, examiner workload, international harmonisation, and applicant strategy. These broader implications are examined in detail in our analysis on the future of the patent examination system in light of the Patent Prosecution Highway.