First pilot program
between Vietnam National Office of Intellectual Property (NOIP) and Japanese
Patent Office (JPO)
NOIP and JPO have jointly undertaken the first Pilot Patent
Prosecution Highway program (“PPH”) since 01st Apr,
2016.
According to this
bilateral PPH, the patent application filed at JPO (previously filed at NOIP)
falling into one of the three following cases:
(i)
An application which validly claims for priority under the Paris Convention on
the basis of NOIP application(s), or
(ii)
A PCT national phase application to Japan without priority claim, or
(iii) An
application which validly claims for priority under the Paris Convention to the
PCT application(s) without priority claim.
And meeting other conditions regulated in Procedures guidance to
file a request to JPO for PPH program between JPO and NOIP (“Procedures”),
the applicant shall be entitled to request JPO to fast prosecute the
application on the basis of providing research and evaluation results of NOIP
and other relevant documents to JPO for references.
For the patent application filed at NOIP (previously submitted to JPO)
falling into one of the three following cases:
(i)
An application which validly claims for priority under the Paris Convention on
the basis of JPO application(s), or
(ii)
A PCT national phase application to Vietnam without priority claims and this
PCT submitted to JPO as an international application receiving agency
(applications’ number initiating with PCT/JP hereby referred to as “PCT/JP
applications”), or
(iii) An application
claims for priority under the Paris Convention on the basis of PCT/JP application(s)
without priority claims;
And meeting other conditions regulated in the Procedures, the
applicant shall be entitled to request NOIP to fast prosecute the application
on the basis of providing research and evaluation results of JPO and other
relevant documents to NOIP for references. The duration of the PPH program
shall be expired by the date of March 31st, 2019.