Crowdsourcing Patent Examination with the Patent Prosecution Highway

The Patent Prosecution Highway (PPH) is a work-share arrangement between the patent offices of different countries. It allows for participating patent offices to share—and thus benefit from—work already performed by other participating patent offices.

In short, when a claim (or claims) of a patent application is allowed in a first patent office, a PPH request may be made to fast-track the examination of a corresponding application in a second patent office based on that allowance. So, for example, when a U.S. patent application is allowed, that allowance can be used to fast-track examination in corresponding foreign applications—or vice versa.

For U.S. applicants, the USPTO also requires that: (1) the claims of the U.S. application correspond in scope to the allowed claims of the foreign application, and (2) substantive examination of the U.S. application has not yet begun. Other countries’ requirements may differ.

Successfully utilizing the PPH can significantly reduce the time it takes for the second patent office to conduct its examination—and it is intended to do just that. While additional benefits may vary from country to country, applications examined under the PPH also generally have higher rates of allowance and suffer less from duplicative examination.