PRESS RELEASES

Date: July 2009

UK Intellectual Property Office announces Fast Track Patent Prosecution Route

Fast Track Prosecution of Applications

The UK Intellectual Property Office has introduced a fast track route to speed up the prosecution of inventions where it can be shown that there are adequate reasons to want to speed up the prosecution. Examples of such reasons would be, for example someone is infringing, or there would be a public benefit in making the technology available to the public. The Patent Office has introduced three measures whereby the process could be speeded up to lead to early publication and grant of the patent. The three measures are

(1) Combined Search & Examination

(2) Accelerated Search & Examination, and

(3) Early publication

If these three measures are requested when filing the application it is possible to reduce the period from filing to grant to less than a year.

Please ask for further information on these procedures by clicking here.

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