What Is the Patent Prosecution Highway (PPH)?

The Patent Prosecution Highway is a network of bilateral agreements between patent offices that allows an applicant to request accelerated examination at a second office based on a positive examination result at a first office. If one patent office has already found your claims patentable, you can use that result to fast-track examination at participating offices worldwide.

PPH is one of the most powerful and underused tools available to patent applicants. It typically reduces examination time from 18–36 months to 3–6 months at the second office, and it reduces overall prosecution costs by shortening the number of Office Action rounds.

How PPH Works

The process is straightforward:

1. Get your claims allowed at a first office. This is the "Office of Earlier Examination" (OEE). The fastest route is often the USPTO (via Track One), the JPO (via Super Accelerated Examination), or the KIPO.

1. File a PPH request at a second office. This is the "Office of Later Examination" (OLE). The request includes a copy of the allowed claims from the OEE, any Office Actions and responses from the OEE, and a claims correspondence table showing how the claims at the OLE correspond to the allowed claims at the OEE.

1. The second office accelerates examination. The examiner at the OLE gives weight to the OEE's examination — though the OLE is not bound by the OEE's conclusions. The OLE conducts its own examination but starts from a position informed by the prior result.

The Numbers

PPH dramatically improves prosecution outcomes at the second office:

Allowance rates under PPH are significantly higher than standard prosecution — typically 80–90% of PPH requests result in allowance, compared to 50–70% for standard prosecution at most offices.

Fewer Office Actions — PPH applications receive an average of 1.0–1.5 Office Actions, compared to 2–3 for standard prosecution.

Faster examination — first Office Action typically issues within 2–4 months of the PPH request, compared to 12–24 months for standard prosecution.

Lower cost — fewer Office Action rounds means fewer response fees and less attorney time. The net savings are typically $2,000–$6,000 per jurisdiction.

Participating Offices

The PPH network covers most major patent offices worldwide, including the USPTO, EPO, JPO, KIPO, CNIPA, UKIPO, IP Australia, CIPO (Canada), INPI (Brazil), IMPI (Mexico), and 20+ others. The specific bilateral agreements determine which office pairs participate — not all combinations are available.

The most widely connected offices are the USPTO and JPO, which have PPH agreements with the largest number of partner offices.

Global PPH (GPPH): A multilateral extension that simplifies the bilateral framework. Under GPPH, a positive result at any participating office can be used at any other participating office — without requiring a specific bilateral agreement between those two offices.

Strategic Use of PPH

Choose your first jurisdiction for speed. File your first substantive application in a jurisdiction with fast examination — Japan (Super Accelerated: 2–6 months to grant), South Korea (Super Accelerated: similar speed), or the US (Track One: 6–12 months). Use the resulting allowance to accelerate prosecution everywhere else via PPH.

Align claims across jurisdictions. PPH works best when the claims at the second office correspond closely to the allowed claims at the first office. Draft your claims with multi-jurisdictional prosecution in mind from the start.

Budget-conscious applicants benefit most. For startups and independent inventors with limited prosecution budgets, PPH can cut the cost of multi-jurisdictional prosecution by 40–60%. One well-prosecuted application creates a cascade of faster, cheaper prosecution at every subsequent office.

Sources

1. USPTO Patent Prosecution Highway (PPH) — US implementation of PPH and participating offices
2. JPO Patent Prosecution Highway — Japan Patent Office PPH programme information
3. EPO PCT-PPH — European Patent Office PPH pilot programme details
4. WIPO PCT System — PCT international search and preliminary examination enabling PPH requests