Hungarian-finnish Patent Cooperation

Hungarian-finnish Patent Cooperation

On 22 October 2009, at the Embassy of Finland in Budapest, Mr. Miklós Bendzsel, President of the Hungarian Patent Officeand Mr.Martti Enäjärvi, President of the National Board of Patents and Registration of Finlandsigned a Memorandum of Understanding on the acceleration of the patent granting procedure.Under the terms of the agreement the Patent Prosecution Highway (PPH) project is to be launched between the two offices on 4 January 2009.

The main idea of the PPH-cooperation is that the parties to the agreement mutually recognise and exploit the work that has been carried out by one of the offices concerning a given application, making it possible for the applicants requesting patent protection for the same invention in both countries to obtain patent protection faster. Consequently, the project is primarily beneficial to those players who operate in the modern, globalised economy and wish to obtain patent protection for a single patent in several countries.

The PPH project, which was initiated by Japan, is based on bilateral agreements. PPH agreements have already been concluded in a dozen countries. These offices include the patent offices of the USA, the United Kingdom, Germany, Australia, Canada, South Korea, Singapore, Denmark, Finland and Austria as well as the European Patent Office.

The importance of the agreement between the Finnish and the Hungarian national offices is enhanced by the fact that this is the first PPH agreement that was concluded between two European offices, thus, it considerably assists European applicants. The news on the agreement has also been published by the Finnish office, which is available in English at the following website address: http://www.prh.fi/en/patentit/pph.html.