The Patent Cooperation Treaty-ASEAN Patent Examination Cooperation (“PCT-ASPEC”) will be extended for three years, through 26 August 2025, according to a recent announcement by the Singapore Intellectual Property Office.
Applicants seeking expedited patent prosecution in South East Asian nations can now continue to benefit from the PCT-ASPEC program as a result of this announcement. There is a cap of 100 applications each year, it should be mentioned. To summarize, there are two main programs for expediting the prosecution of patent applications in the nine ASEAN Intellectual Property (“IP”) Offices that are participating, namely the IP Offices of Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Lao PDR, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam.
The following are the two main programs.
“Normal” ASPEC
ASPEC, a regional program for sharing patent work among the nine participating ASEAN IP Offices, was introduced in 2009. ASPEC allows applicants to expedite the prosecution of patent applications in any of the other participating IP Offices by using search and examination reports issued by any of the participating ASEAN IP Offices (for example, an Examination Report issued by the Intellectual Property Office of Singapore) with at least one allowable claim.
PCT-ASPEC
With the implementation of the PCT-ASPEC pilot program in 2019, applicants will have an additional option to expedite the prosecution of patent applications in the nine participating ASEAN IP Offices by relying on a PCT Written Opinion or International Preliminary Report on Patentability (IPRP) established by an ASEAN International Searching Authority or Preliminary Examining Authority.
You can find the list of ASIAN IP FIRMS here.