The U.S. Patent & Trademark Office and its equivalent in Russia are launching a one-year pilot program on Sept. 1 to fast-track each other's approved patent applications.
Such "Patent Prosecution Highway Programs" allow patent offices to use each other's work to help process applications more quickly.
The PTO’s pilot program with Russia’s Federal Service for Intellectual Property, Patents and Trademarks of the Russian Federation, or Rospatent, means that an applicant receiving a favorable ruling from one nation's patent office on at least one claim in an application may request that the corresponding application filed with the other nation be fast-tracked for examination.
PTO Director David Kappos in a statement called the program “an important step toward the goal of maximizing reutilization of work done by other offices.”
Rospatent Director General Boris Simonov said the arrangement would help reduce the “backlogs of unexamined patent applications as well as establishing international standards of carrying out patent search and examination.”
The PTO first began patent highway programs in 2006, and has similar arrangements in place with foreign patent offices including Japan, Korea, the European Union, Canada and Australia.
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