Recently, the China National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA)  and the National Institute of Industrial Property (INPI) have jointly decided to extend the CNIPA-INPI Patent Prosecution Highway (PPH) pilot program starting from January 1, 2025. The established Guideline of CNIPA-INPI PPH Request remains controlling the pertinent requirements and procedures governing applicants' PPH requests at the two offices.

According to information released by INPI, its PPH program will enter a new phase starting from January 1, 2025. The total annual number of PPH applications accepted from all its PPH cooperation partners will increase to 3,200, with no more than 800 applications received per quarter. Additionally, the total annual number of PPH applications accepted under the same International Patent Classification (IPC)  Section will increase to 1,000. The restriction that previously allowed each applicant to submit only one application per week will be lifted. Since the first quarter of 2025, INPI will not accept PPH applications under IPC classification H04. The accepted technical fields will be reassessed quarterly.

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, CNIPA has built PPH ties with 33 national or regional patent examination authorities, covering 84 countries.