BEIJING - In a bid to further enhance the user experience of the Patent Prosecution Highway (PPH), the China National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA) announced joining the "PPH Improvement Initiative", which involves cooperation between the world's five leading intellectual property (IP) offices, namely China, the United States, Europe, Japan and the Republic of Korea. The objective of this initiative is to strive for an average duration of 3 months both from the grant of a PPH request to the issuance of first office action and for an average response time from examiner to the applicant, thereby providing PPH users with a more predictable examination cycle, according to the official website of CNIPA.

PPH is a fast track linking patent examination duties of different countries or regions, allowing patent examination authorities to speed up patent examination by work sharing. Since the initiation of the first PPH program in November 2011, the CNIPA has built PPH ties with patent examination authorities of 32 countries or regions.