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Types of PPH agreements

There are different types of PPH agreements. The type of the agreement between the first and the second office determines what kind of application can serve as the basis for a PPH request. The agreements have traditionally been bilateral, while the types of agreements have varied between the individual authorities.

According to a regular PPH agreement, you may request a second patent office (Office of Second Filing, OFF) to fast-track the examination of your patent claims, when there is a positive result from a national examination of the corresponding patent claims by a first patent office (Office of First Filing, OFF). When two offices have concluded a regular PPH agreement, the Office of First Filing (OFF) must be the authority that initially received the application.

The PCT-PPH agreement enables you to request a fast-track examination at a second office when an International Searching Authority (ISA) or an International Preliminary Examining Authority (IPEA) has issued a positive written opinion or a positive international preliminary report on patentability, respectively, regarding the application concerned.

You can request a fast-track examination at a subsequent patent authority (Office of Later Examination, OLE) on the basis of an earlier office’s (Office of Earlier Examination, OEE) examination result, when these two authorities have signed a PPH (MOTTAINAI) agreement . In this case, the OEE does not have to be the first authority (OFF) to receive the application concerned.

The Global PPH (GPPH) is a co-operation project between 27 patent offices, and aims to simplify the existing PPH system. The GPPH parties have agreed on uniform requirements for the PPH requests, and have created common guidelines for their processing. The Global PPH is based on the PPH (MOTTAINAI) system, which allows you to file a PPH request with another office on the basis of patent claims found allowable by any of the contracting parties, regardless of which office was the first to receive the application. You can file a GPPH request on the basis of a national or a PCT application.

Most of our agreements are based on the GPPH.Here you can find information about our PPH agreements and guidelines for filing a PPH request.

Printable version Latest update 29.07.2020