Speeding the Patent Process: a first for Peru

This week the Peruvian National Institute for the Defense of Competition and Protection of Intellectual Property (Indecopi) reported its first request for the Patent Prosecution Highway (PPH).
The application came from a Chilean company which is seeking to accelerate the process of granting its patent for a ‘method of manufacture for a concrete slab’.

The accelerated process called PPH: when applying to a foreign jurisdiction a national office may have a PPH, meaning a ‘fast-track examination procedure’. This PPH will usually be an agreement that 2 states or a region may have.

In this particular case Peru has signed an agreement with the member countries of the Pacific Alliance (Chile, Colombia and Mexico). Therefore, when a patent application receives a “favourable opinion on the patentability of an invention in the patent offices of the member countries [in this case from Chile] … Indecopi will take into account the results of that examination”.

The PPH allows the “exchange of information between patent offices, avoids duplication of efforts and accelerates the granting procedures”. Peru recently signed a PPH with PROSUR - Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay and Uruguay (see previous post here) and has already signed another one with Spain.

Source INDECOPI.