USPTO Stops Granting New Global PPH Requests, and Terminates Special Status for Previously Granted Global PPH Requests, Based on Earlier Work Performed by Rospatent

Effective March 11, 2022, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has stopped granting new Global Patent Prosecution Highway (Global PPH or GPPH) requests that are based on work performed by the Russian Federal Service for Intellectual Property (Rospatent) as the Office of Earlier Examination (OEE). Also effective March 11, the USPTO will terminate previously granted Global PPH requests that are based on work performed by Rospatent as the OEE.  According to the USPTO, applications previously granted special status under the Global PPH based on OEE work performed by Rospatent will revert to “the regular processing and examination queue” and “will no longer be treated as Global PPH applications at the USPTO.” 

The USPTO made these announcements on March 10 by email to stakeholders and on its PPH website:  https://www.uspto.gov/patents/basics/international-protection/patent-prosecution-highway-pph-fast-track

We will provide more information as it becomes available.