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14
2024-04
China joins PPH improvement Initiative involving IP5
The China National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA) announced on April 14 that it will join the Patent Prosecution Highway (PPH) Improvement Initiative, which involves cooperation between the world's five leading IP offices, namely China, the United States, Europe, Japan and the Republic of Korea.
The objective of this initiative is to establish a more predictable examination cycle. According to the CNIPA, it will strive for an average duration of 3 months from the grant of a PPH request to the issuance of a first office action. Similarly, it will aim for an average response time from examiner to applicant of no more than 3 months.
PPH is a fast track linking patent examination duties of different countries or regions, allowing patent examination authorities to share their work to speed up patent examination.
Since the initiation of the first PPH pilot program in November 2011, the CNIPA has built PPH ties with patent examination authorities of 32 countries or regions.
The five members of the initiative are the world's five leading IP offices, known as the IP5. They together handle about 80 percent of the world's patent applications. The IP5 was set up to improve the efficiency of the examination process for patents worldwide.
More Information
In January 2022, the USPTO and JPO first made a joint statement on efforts to improve the PPH. The two Offices each set a target deadline for issuing office actions for PPH applications and strive to meet the target as they examine each application, thus making it easier for users to predict the timing of the examination.
Targets set by the two Offices
JPO
The targets set by the JPO and the results for 2022 against those targets are as follows:
| Target | Result (1 January to 31 December 2022) | |
|---|---|---|
| Average period from completion of PPH request to first office action | Within 3 months | 2.3 months |
| Average period from applicant’s response to subsequent office action | Within 3 months | 1.5 months |
USPTO
|
Average period from completion of PPH request to first office action on the merits |
within three (3) months |
|
Average period from applicant’s response to the first office action on the merits to subsequent office action |
within three (3) months |
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