Cabinet approves the Patent Prosecution Highway programme

The Union Cabinet chaired by the Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi has approved the proposal for adoption of Patent Prosecution Highway (PPH) programme by the Indian Patent Office (IPO) under the Controller General of Patents, Designs & Trade Marks, India (CGPDTM) with patent offices of various other interest countries or regions.

The said programme will initially commence between Japan Patent Office (JPO) and Indian Patent Office on pilot basis for a period of three years only.Under this Pilot programme, Indian Patent Office may receive patent applications in certain specified technical fields only, namely, Electrical, Electronics, Computer Science, Information Technology, Physics, Civil, Mechanical, Textiles, Automobiles and Metallurgy while JPO may receive applications in all fields of technology.

PPH programme would lead to the following benefits for the Indian IP office:

Reduction in time to dispose patent applications.
Reduction in pendency of patent applications.
Improvement in quality of search and examination of patent applications.
An opportunity for Indian inventors including MSMEs and Start-ups of India to get accelerated examination of their patent applications in Japan.
The ambit of the programme may be extended in future, as decided by the Commerce & Industry Minister. The patent offices will frame their own guidelines for implementation of the programme.