Collaborative Search Pilot with Korea and Japan

The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) discloses that the Expanded Collaborative Search Pilot (CSP) builds upon the successful first phase that was recently completed in the summer of 2017. The program is designed to provide the examiners with the best prior art by combining the search expertise of examiners at the USPTO and JPO or KIPO before issuing an office action in the patent application.

The applications completed so far in the initial CSP program showed that all offices contributed relevant prior art to the prosecution history – with the result being a significant reduction in prosecution time and a substantially reduced need for Requests for Continued Examination to complete prosecution – with over a 90% allowance rate. The expanded version of the CSP program will build on these successes and continue to improve compact prosecution and enhance patent quality.

Beginning November 1, 2017, applicants wishing to take advantage of the benefits of the expanded CSP program will need to have unexamined corresponding counterpart applications in the USPTO and either/both KIPO and JPO. No-cost petitions need to be filed in the USPTO and at the desired partner Office(s), in accordance with their rules. Acceleration of examination of the applications in the Offices will take place once the petitions are granted. The Offices will simultaneously search and examine their respective application and will exchange and evaluate these results prior to the Offices sending an action to the applicant. An applicant can take advantage of both bilateral agreements simultaneously with the same USPTO application.

The federal agency states that improvements made in this version of the CSP program include removing the dependence on the First Action Interview (FAI) program, incorporation of references cited by partner offices in the First Action on the Merits (FAOM), a further reduction in the time from petition grant to FAOM, and reducing the requirement for claims correspondence to be limited to independent claims. There is a limit of 400 applications per year for each agreement.