Peru joins Global Patent Prosecution Highway

By Espinosa Bellido Abogados

On January 6, 2019, the National Institute for the Defense of Competition and Protection of Intellectual Property (Indecopi) of Peru joined the Global Patent Prosecution Highway (GPPH) pilot program.
“Now, Peruvian inventors may request the streamlining of procedures to protect their research, inventions or innovations at the following patent offices in the world”, Indecopi stated in a press release.

The Global Patent Prosecution Highway (Global PPH) is a framework in which an application determined to be patentable in the Office of earlier examination is eligible to have an accelerated examination in the Office of later examination with a simple procedure upon an applicant’s request. Under the Global PPH, a request for accelerated processing can be made at any participating office based on work products, including PCT work products, from any one of the other participating offices under unified criteria. Global PPH leverages fast-track examination procedures already in place among participating patent offices to allow applicants to reach final disposition of a patent application more quickly and efficiently than standard examination processing.

Until now, Indecopi had signed bilateral PPH agreements with certain patent offices; however, with the Global PPH a significant advance has been made since it will have access to the most important patent offices at an international level.