Accelerated Processing for Patent Applications: Patent Prosecution Highway (PPH)

A number of bilateral agreements have been signed between patent offices to promote work-sharing and enable patent applicants to request accelerated processing in the national proceedings, where patent examiners can make use of the work products from the other office.

Likewise, PPH speeds up the examination process for corresponding applications filed in counterpart patent offices through the exploitation of all the search/examination-related information of the Office of First Filing.

Nevertheless, the Turkish Patent and Trademark Office (TURKPATENT) has PPH agreements only with Spanish Patent and Trademark Office (SPTO) and Japan Patent Office (JIPO).

Requirements

For qualifying a PPH request of accelerated examination between two patent offices, the following conditions should be met:

• The Office of First Filing must complete an examination on the patentability of the claims, and at least one which is found to be allowable for a grant.

• All claims in the later application must sufficiently correspond to the allowable claims in the earlier application which received the said favorable ruling from the Office of First Filing.

• The PPH request must be filed before substantive examination has begun at the Office of Second Filing.

All prosecution history documents and translations thereof (e.g., copies of office actions, search reports, examination reports, any cited foreign patents and/or non-patent literature, notices of allowances, etc.) in the earlier application must be submitted together with an explanation of the correlation between the claims in the form of a Claims Comparison Table (of amendments, if any).

Further Info

For further information on your particular interest, you may see any of the following links:

• The Official TURKPATENT Homepage about PPH TR Guidelines

• The Official PPH Homepage about PPH globally

• The Official WIPO Homepage about PCT-Patent Prosecution Highway Program

Ersin Dereligil

Turkish, Patent & Trademark Attorney European Patent Attorney, Chemical Engineer ersin.dereligil@kordinat.com.tr

The information in this update is intended to be general information about Turkish Patent Practice only and not comprehensive. It is not to be relied on as legal advice nor as an alternative to taking professional advice. All rights reserved. 
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