EPO, JPO and USPTO agreed to begin pilot Patent Prosecution Highway 1/29/2010

Trilateral Offices reached agreement on November 13, 2009, to begin a pilot
program in the Patent Prosecution Highway (PPH) framework utilizing PCT work
products (international search reports, written opinions, and international
preliminary search reports).

Under the PPH, an applicant receiving a determination from an office of first filing
that claims in an application are allowable may request that the corresponding
application filed at a second office be advanced out of turn for examination as to
those allowable claims. To date, the PPH program, begun in 2006 and now the
subject of bilateral agreements among a number of IP offices, has proved
valuable in increasing efficiency.
 
The details of this new pilot program, scheduled to begin on January 29, 2010,
will be available shortly and posted at http://www.trilateral.net/index.html.

The Trilateral Co-operation was set up in 1983 between

• the European Patent Office (EPO),
• the Japan Patent Office (JPO) and
• the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO)

See
http://www.trilateral.net/news/Conference2009.html