The Patent Prosecution Highway (PPH) was established to enable an applicant, whose claims are determined patentable in the Office of First Filing (OFF), to have the corresponding application expedited to an Office of Second Filing (OSF), out of turn, for examination, while at the same time allowing the OSF to make use of the search and examination results of the OFF.  As a result, the PPH program saves time for both applicants and examiners. 

Fig. 1 How the PPH Works

At present, TIPO has successfully established four PPH programs with Spain, Japan, the US and South Korea. Table 1-1 to Table1-4 show statistics from TIPO, released in March. According to the statistics, the PPH between TIPO and the Japan Patent Office is the most popular PPH program and has accumulated 1,841 cases in total within 5 years.

Table 1-1 Number of PPH cases via the TIPO-USPTO PPH program (2011 Sept. - 2016 March)

Source: TIPO, 2016/4/8
Note: Applicants from other countries include Singapore (36), Netherlands(27), Israel (23), the UK (18), Canada (17), Germany (12), Japan (6), the Cayman Islands (5), Mainland China (5), Switzerland (5), Sweden (4), Italy (4), Saudi Arabia (3), Hong Kong (3), Malaysia (2), Mexico (1), France (1), Croatia (1), Luxembourg (1), South Korea(1), Turkey (1), The British Virgin Islands (1) and Ireland (1).   

Table 1-1 shows the statistics of TIPO-USPTO PPH cases from 2011 to 2016 March. There have been a total of 1,261 cases since the TIPO-USPTO PPH was launched, and applicants from the US made up 80%, suggesting that US companies are embracing the PPH.  Companies from other countries have also chosen the USPTO as their OFF, and then apply for a Taiwanese patent via the TIPO-USPTO PPH program. 

Table 1-2 Number of PPH cases via TIPO-JPO PPH program (2012 May ~ 2016 March)

Source: TIPO, 2016/4/8
Note: Applicants from other countries include Sweden (6), The US (3), Germany (1), Netherlands (1), and Singapore (1)

Table 1-2 shows the statistics for applications to the TIPO-JPO PPH program within the last 5 years.  Japanese companies have applied for 1823 patents in total via the TIPO-JPO PPH program (about 365 patents per year, one patent per day).  However, Taiwanese companies only filed 6 patents in the 5 year period.

Japanese firms seem to have taken to the TIPO-JPO PPH program more quickly and have adopted it as a useful tool to speed up the patent prosecution process. 

Table 1-3 Number of PPH cases via TIPO-SPTO PPH program (2013 Oct. ~ 2016 March)

Source: TIPO, 2016/4/8

Table 1-4 Number of PPH cases via TIPO-KIPO PPH program (2015 July ~ 2016 March)

Source: TIPO, 2016/4/8
Note: Applicants from other countries include Japan (2) and the US (1)

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