Australia Climbs on to the Patent Prosecution Highway
BAZPAT: Not too long ago, the Australian Patent Office (IP Australia) decided to lend our cousins in the USPTO a hand. That was to help with the backlog there, which I’m sure all us professionals have felt.
That’s not to say there wasn’t a backlog here. But let’s not get into that now…
Anyway, the help is in the form of our Examiners getting involved in the USPTO examination process.
That’s had an interesting side-effect in the form of an adoption of a trial of the patent prosecution highway program between IP Australia and the USPTO. Information from the USPTO is available here: http://www.uspto.gov/web/patents/pph/pph_ipau.html. Information from IP Australia is available here: http://www.ipaustralia.gov.au/patents/international/pph_uspto.shtml.
The trial starts on April 14 this year and will be similar to the PPH that is currently in place between the US, Canada, Japan, Korea and the United Kingdom.
All the information about this process is readily available at both the…