The Japanese Patent Office (JPO) concurred with the Hungarian Patent Office (HPO) that the two offices would launch a Patent Prosecution Highway (PPH) Pilot Program on August 3, 2009. This brings the number of the JPO’s PPH partners worldwide to ten. These Offices, including the JPO, receive around 65% in total of worldwide patent filings. It is anticipated this will result in more expeditious and advantageous acquisition of rights for inventions by applicants in participating countries.

The ten Offices that the JPO has made PPH arrangements with are as follows:

1. The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO)
2. The Korean Industrial Property Office (KIPO)
3. The United Kingdom Intellectual Property Office (UK-IPO)
4. The German Patent and Trademark Office (GPTO)
5. The Danish Patent and Trademark Office (DKPTO)
6. The National Board of Patents and Registration of Finland (NBPR)
7. The Federal Service for Intellectual Property, Patents & Trademarks of Russia (ROSPATENT)
8. The Austrian Patent Office (APO)
9. The Intellectual Patent Office of Singapore (IPOS)
10. The Hungarian Patent Office (HPO)

The JPO intends to have talks with other Offices, particularly the European Patent Office and the Canadian Intellectual Property Office towards the conclusion of PPH arrangements.

For more information, please refer to the following web sites:

http://www.jpo.go.jp/torikumi_e/t_torikumi_e/patent_highway_e.htm

https://www.ondatechno.com/en/faq/patent/p341/

If you would like to accelerate the examination based on the PPH, please provide us with the following documents/information so that we can file a petition for accelerated examination.

1. A table to explain how the claims indicated as allowable in the Office sufficiently correspond to the claims in the JPO application;
2. Claims which have been allowed as patentable;
3. A copy of office actions issued by the Office for corresponding patents; and
4.  A copy of the cited references in the office actions.