New UK-Korea Agreement To Speed Up Patent Granting Process

by Robin Pilgrim, LawAndTax-News.com, London

15 June 2009

The UK and Korea signed a new agreement on Friday, June 5, 2009, as part of the Intellectual Property Office’s ongoing drive to make the patent system cheaper and more efficient for businesses.

The agreement is the third for the UK under the “Patent Prosecution Highway” initiative.

The Patent Prosecution Highway procedure is free in the UK and reduces the time it takes businesses to obtain patent protection in the UK and abroad.

Under the agreement, both offices will start a pilot program of the "Patent Prosecution Highway" (PPH) for the patent applications (including PCT applications) filed with both offices.

The basic concept of the pilot program is as follows: where the office of first filing (OFF) has assessed the patentability of a patent application, the office of second filing (OSF) ensures that the applicant is entitled to benefit from an accelerated examination for the corresponding application, provided that certain conditions are met.

Those conditions include sufficient correspondence in the claims of the two applications and the search and examination results of the OFF being made available to the OSF.

The pilot program of the PPH will commence on October 1, 2009. The duration of the pilot program is one year with an option to extend the program at the request of the Offices. Both Offices will evaluate the results of the pilot program to determine whether and how the PPH should be fully implemented after the trial period.

The details of the pilot program of the PPH will be determined before the start of the program.

Both Offices will periodically evaluate and exchange information on the status of the PPH pilot program, and consider making modifications to the program on the basis of the results of the evaluation.

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