China and Brazil: taking the highway?

February 1st saw the launch of the Instituto Nacional da Propiedad Industrial (INPI)'s Patent Prosecution Highway (PPH) pilot project with the State Intellectual Property Institute of China (SIPO). The project will last two years and the application are capped up to 200. The rules of this PPH are found in Resolution 209/2018.

Speeding the process: cake in the staff common room.

Both parties will be able to use the result of the examination of the patent application and so, accelerating the assessment process in the other office. The PPH is a fast-track examination agreement; this is so, because the parties involved enable work-sharing. At first instance, the applicant whose claims have been found to be patentable by either the INPI or SIPO may ask for accelerated processing of their equivalent application that is pending before the other office.

Brazil also has a PPH with the European Patent Office signed back in November 2017. This project will run for two years and will start early 2018 (more information here and here). The EPO only had a PPH with one Latin America country i.e. Mexico. Brazil has three more PPH agreements: United States - until June, 2018 (reported here), Japan, and with the countries members of PROSUR - running from four years and with the probability to be extended (here).

Source INPI.