The Saudi Authority for Intellectual Property (SAIP) recently signed a Patent Prosecution Highway (PPH) agreement with the European Patent Office (EPO).
The PPH agreement is expected to foster and develop a bilateral partnership in the field of intellectual property and to strengthen the relationship between Saudi Arabia and the European Union. The PPH allows an application that has been determined to be patentable by the EPO to undergo an accelerated examination with a simple procedure upon the applicant’s request.
It is worth noting that the SAIP has already signed similar PPH agreements with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), Japan Patent Office (JPO), Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO), and China National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA). Furthermore, pursuant to these agreements, the SAIP has limited the PPH programs in place to specific International Patent Classifications (IPC), which fall under the following four general classes: physics, civil engineering, mechanics, and metals.
We expect these PPH agreements, among other efforts by the SAIP, to streamline the Saudi patent registration procedures and attract foreign patent applicants from the aforementioned industries to register their inventions in Saudi Arabia.
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