Patent Prosecution Highway Pilot Program between Japan and Canada
The Japanese Patent Office (JPO) and the Canadian Intellectual Property Office (CIPO) agreed to commence the Patent Prosecution Highway (PPH) Pilot Program on October 1, 2009, at the JPO/CIPO Heads Meeting held in Geneva. From October 1, applicants may request accelerated examination in both the countries under the PPH pilot program.
Canada is the eleventh country with which Japan has implemented the PPH pilot program following the U.S., Korea, the U.K., Germany, Denmark, Finland, Russia, Austria, Singapore, and Hungary. For details, please visit the following URL:
http://www.jpo.go.jp/torikumi_e/t_torikumi_e/pph_cipo/eigo.htm
Please note that the PPH does not assure grant of the application even if the counterpart application was granted in Canada or any other country. That is, even if the PPH is used, the JPO examines applications according to the Japanese Patent Law and the Japanese practice without being influenced from examination results in other countries. In practice, we have found that most of the applications for which we requested the PPH, we have received an office action pointing out lack of inventive step and/or lack of clarity in the claims.