STEM IP

  Patent Prosecution Highway (PPH) – Fast Track Examination of Applications   The Patent Prosecution Highway (PPH) speeds up the examination process for corresponding applications filed in participating intellectual property offices. To offer applicants a faster route to patent allowance, reduce patent office workloads and streamline procedure, many patent offices have looked into ways of ‘sharing’ their work. The Patent Prosecution Highway consists of a network of agreements between various patent offices allowing applicants to accelerate prosecution in one office using positive examination results received from another office. This page provides a general overview of the PPH system and its […]

  Procedure of filing international applications for patent under the Patent Cooperation Treaty   The Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) is an international patent law treaty having more than 145 Contracting States, The patent cooperation treaty was concluded in 1970. The PCT is controlled  by the World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO). The main objective of the PCT application is to make possible to seek patent protection for an invention  in a large number of countries simultaneously by filing a single “international” patent application. The  PCT application also avoids filing of several separate national or regional patent applications by providing a single […]

  Update on Patent Subject Matter Eligibility USPTO Issues New Subject Matter Eligibility Guidance On October 17, 2019, the USPTO issued new patent subject matter eligibility guidance, the first such memo since the January 2019 guidance on 35 U.S.C. §101.  The January 2019 memo described a three step, two prong procedure for determining patent subject matter eligibility: (i) patent claims must be directed to a statutory category; (iia) the claims must not recite a judicial exception, or if it does, (iib) any exception must be integrated into a practical application; and (iii) if the claims are directed to a judicial […]

  Patent Expert Issues: Inventions in Spaces   Despite the fact that space technology has long been one of the most advanced technical areas in the world, and outer space activities are, in fact, the fruit of intellectual creations, it is only in recent years that intellectual property issues have begun to be raised in connection with extraterrestrial activities. Some of the reasons for this are that space activities are increasingly shifting from being state-owned activities to becoming private and commercial activities. Further, an increasing number of space activities are operated under international cooperation schemes, which depend on a simple, […]