The Patent Prosecution Highway (PPH) is a set of initiatives for providing accelerated patent prosecution procedures by sharing information between some patent offices. It also permits each participating patent office to benefit from the work previously done by the other patent office, with the goal of reducing examination workload and improving patent quality. An updated "PPH 2.0" system under the program name "Mottainai" (a Japanese word meaning "wasteful") began among several national patent offices in mid-2011.

Cooperations (examples)

A number of patent offices are participating to PPH schemes. The following are examples of cooperations:

Trilateral PCT-Patent Prosecution Highway (PCT-PPH)

A Patent Cooperation Treaty/Patent Prosecution Highway (PCT/PPH) pilot program was also started on 29 January 2010 for a planned period of two years. This pilot program enables to "[fast-track] patent examination procedures for PCT applications that have received a positive written opinion of either the International Searching Authority or the International Preliminary Examining Authority, or an international preliminary examination report from the European Patent Office (EPO), the Japan Patent Office (JPO) or the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO)."

IP5 patent prosecution highway (IP5-PPH)

On 6 January 2016, a patent prosecution highway program was launched between the five intellectual property offices A decision was made in 2016 to extend the duration of the programme by three years. The European Patent Office published in its official journal that the program is going to available from 6 January 2017 until 5 January 2020. Participation in the program before the European Patent Office requires that substantive examination of the European patent application has not started yet. The starting date of substantive examination of a European patent application is publicly available from the European Patent Register via file inspection.

Specific patent offices