In view of the satisfactory result of Taiwan-Japan Patent Prosecution Highway (PPH) 2-year pilot program that started in May 2012 between TIPO and JPO, both sides agreed to modify the said program to PPH Mottainai and extended for another three years starting from May 1, 2014. Per the modified pilot program, the examination result of the office of first filing (OFF) no longer has primacy over that of the office of second filing (OSF). Namely, if one of the offices (OFF or OSF) has already issued an examination result, the applicant may utilize the said result to file a request for PPH with another office. For instance, if a Taiwanese applicant files a Japanese application claiming a Taiwan corresponding application, and if JPO has made a decision to allow certain claims, the applicant may file a request for PPH with TIPO using the said examination result first issued by JPO. In fact, the said circumstance was not allowed per the previous PPH program. Accordingly, PPH Mottainai would bring much more benefit to the applicants than the original PPH did.
Furthermore, the newly promulgated PPH Mottainai will be valid till April 30, 2017, and extendable subject to the implementing result then.
From May 2012 to March 2014, there were 817 cases filed with TIPO requesting for expedited examination under Taiwan-Japan PPH program; among which, in 2012 there were 208 cases filed by foreign applicants; in 2013, there were 4 cases filed by local applicants and 489 cases by foreign applicants. In 2013, per the statistics, for the applications requesting expedited examination by utilizing Taiwan-Japan PPH pilot program, the average OA issue time is 53.1 days, and the average total processing time for an application until completion of the case is 108 days. Therefore, for Japanese applicants filing the patent application by utilizing PPH program with TIPO, the advantage thereof is obvious.
