USPTO Launches PPH with HPO on July 1, To Launch PPH with Rospatent on September 1

On July 1, 2010, the Hungarian Patent Office (HPO) and the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) launched the Patent Prosecution Highway (PPH) pilot program, aimed at accelerating the patent granting procedure by sharing information between patent offices.

The trial period, designed to assess the feasibility of the project, will end a year later, on July 1, 2011, but it can be extended or terminated at an earlier date depending on the volume of work and other factors.

The PPH agreements allow each participating patent office to benefit from the search and examination work already done by the other office. For example, an applicant that received a favorable ruling from one patent office on at least one claim in the application may request a fast-track examination of the corresponding application filed with the other patent office. The applicants thus benefit from patentability determination in multiple jurisdictions and reduced costs of prosecution.

“Utilization of the results of patent examinations, performed according to common quality standards for the benefit of our clients, may accelerate technology transfer between the USA and Hungary, as well as enhance co-operation in the field of innovation”, stated the HPO President Miklos Bendzsel.

“The amount of repetitious work involved in examining patent filings first filed in other patent offices represents a significant impact on the USPTO’s workload and the workload of other offices, and contributes to our backlog and long pendency periods,” stated the Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the USPTO David Kappos. “Work sharing with other similarly skilled examiners in other patent offices such as the Hungarian Patent Office is one of our most important tools to speed patent examination and enhance quality.”

According to the Russian Federal Service for Intellectual Property, Patents and Trademarks (Rospatent), the PPH will also be launched between Rospatent and the USPTO on September 1, 2010, for a trial period of one year ending on August 30, 2011.

For more information, please contact Aleksandra Noveska at our Macedonia office.

Source: USPTO, HPO, Rospatent