Increasing The Speed Limit On The Patent Prosecution Highway

The Patent Prosecution Highway (PPH) is a well established initiative that provides a means of prioritizing examination of patent applications, under certain conditions, where an indication of allowance has been made. A patent application whose claims have been determined to be patentable in the Office of First Filing (OFF), is eligible to go through an accelerated examination in the Office(s) of Second Filing (OSF), upon the applicant's request.

Under the current PPH scheme, the OFF must provide its examination results before any PPH partner offices accept PPH requests. Because of this, if examination results become available from the OSF prior to those of the OFF, applicants are restricted from making a PPH request in the OSF. Thus applicants are unable to exploit favourable examination results from an OFF for the purpose of accelerated prosecution under the PPH in the OSF.