El Salvador enters into an Accelerated Patent Grant agreement with the United States

By Eproint

El Salvador and the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) signed an Accelerated Patent Grant (APG) agreement, an applicant-driven patent collaboration between IP offices. 

Now, an applicant who has received a U.S. patent may request the El Salvador office (CNR, for its Spanish acronym) to grant its national patent on a corresponding application pending in that office, on the basis of the U.S. patent and without a substantive examination taking place, subject to the relevant laws of that country. 

The APG between El Salvador and the USPTO, signed on August 20, 2024, is part of a longer effort from the United States to enters into patent worksharing arrangements with foreign intellectual property offices to improve patent examination efficiency and facilitate cooperation within the global patent system. 

Patent worksharing like an APG permits IP offices to collaborate in the examination of commonly filed patent applications. These are typically associated through a claim of foreign priority under an international framework, such as the Paris Convention or the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT).

Patent worksharing also reduces many of the inefficiencies that IP offices experience when repeating each other’s work. The benefits of worksharing can be especially significant when the offices involved have different capabilities and strengths that can be leveraged by each other. This can come in the form of accessibility to prior art in different languages or even IT resources and tools.

Photo by the US Embassy in San Salvador, El Salvador