HIPO and USPTO Continue Patent Prosecution Highway

The Hungarian Intellectual Property Office (HIPO) and the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) have recently agreed to extend the Patent Prosecution Highway (PPH) program, which was launched on July 1, 2010 to accelerate the patent granting procedure by sharing information between the two patent offices.

The PPH’s trial period ended a year after the launch, but as the applicants became more interested in the program’s benefits, HIPO and USPTO extended the program in order to assess its feasibility more thoroughly. A formal decision on the future of the program has not been reached yet.

The PPH enables each participating office to use the work already done by the other office, which avoids duplication of work and accelerates the patent granting procedure. For example, an applicant that received a favorable ruling from one patent office on at least one claim in the application may request a fast-track examination of the corresponding application filed with the other patent office.