Basing A Patent Prosecution Highway (PPH) Request On An Allowed UK Or EP Patent Application

The efficacy of PPH varies from territory to territory. In some patent offices there is a history of examination being influenced by the granting of a patent by particular patent offices; PPH may work well for such patent offices. In other patent offices, requesting PPH only results in acceleration and does not guarantee allowance.

The Main PPH Agreements

There is a large network of different PPH agreements, with new agreements regularly being made. In practice, however, the requirements for requesting PPH are very similar in most patent offices. Some of the main PPH pathways are:

• IP5 PPH – an agreement between five of the biggest patent offices: the Chinese Intellectual Property Office (SIPO), European Patent Office (EPO), Japanese Patent Office (JPO), Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO), and the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). A PPH request in a participating patent office may be based on the results of examination of