How to Accelerate the Examination of American Appearance Patents

Chinese applicants applying for design patents in the United States can apply directly to the United States Patent and Trademark Office through the Paris Convention.

There are two situations:

1. A patent for design has been applied for in China, and when the application was filed in the United States, it did not exceed six months from the date of application of the Chinese patent. At this time, the patent can claim the priority of the Chinese design.

2. If no design patent has been applied for in China, an application may be filed directly with the United States.

For the first case, we can consider to obtain accelerated examination through PPH (Patent Examination Highway) request. The Patent Examination Highway (PPH) means that when at least one or more of the claims contained in the patent application submitted by the first application acceptance office are considered to be patentable, the applicant may, on this basis, submit a request for accelerated examination to the subsequent application acceptance office.

The following conditions need to be met when applying for PPH to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office:

1. Is the earliest filing date or priority date on which the earlier application has the same priority as the U.S. patent application.

2. The claims of the US patent application shall be substantially corresponding to those of the earlier application for authorization. "Full correspondence" generally means that the claims of the U.S. patent application have the same or similar scope, or a smaller scope, with the claims of the earlier authorized applications.

3. The applicant must submit an electronic application, that is, through the EFS-Web system in the United States.

4. After applying for authorization (China), the Chinese applicant can consider submitting the US PPH request quickly.

5. The time when the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office filed the PPH request was that the substantive examination of the U.S. patent application had not yet begun.

Making good use of the patent examination highway can reduce the number of notices, greatly improve the efficiency of patent examination, and shorten the time of authorization, thus saving the applicant a large number of foreign lawyer fees.

Expedited Examination (also known as Rocket Docket Request) is not specifically for appearance patents, and there are similar procedures for invention patents. In both cases, the applicant completes most of the retrieval and review work for the examiner in advance to achieve the accelerated effect. Therefore, it is not difficult to understand that, like the accelerated examination of the American invention patent, the accelerated examination of appearance also requires the applicant to submit the search results. The specific requirements for applying for accelerated examination are as follows:

1. Submit design drawings that meet the requirements of the U.S. Patent Examination Guidelines;

2. Pre search the appearance application and state the category and scope of the search. This search can be the search report of the same family application in other national bureaus, or it can be searched by a professional patent agency (including patent or non patent documents);

3. Pay an additional official fee for accelerated review.

Although the request for accelerated examination can be made after the application is submitted, in order to facilitate the procedure and maximize the accelerated effect, the United States Patent and Trademark Office recommends that the applicant should request accelerated examination at the same time as submitting the application.