Israel and the USA have had a bilateral patent prosecution highway (PPH) agreement in place since July 1, 2011; on June 28 of this year it was announced that this program would become permanent. This agreement enables someone who filed first in the USA and who has at least one claim allowed in the USA to have his corresponding Israel application jump to the front of the examination queue on the basis of the US allowance, provided the claims pending in Israel correspond (or are amended to correspond) to the claims allowed in the USA. The reverse is also true for applications first filed in Israel and subsequently filed in the USA, if at least one claim in the Israel application is found allowable. See here for more details.
As reported today on the PatentDocs blog, earlier this month the USPTO announced that the PPH program with Israel was being extended to include the results of PCT search and examination: a favorable Written Opinion or International Preliminary Report on Patentability issued by the USPTO or the ILPTO, indicating that at least one claim is novel, has inventive step and industrial applicability can in certain circumstances be used as a basis for expediting the examination of the corresponding case in the other country.
As noted in an earlier post, the expansion of the PPH program to include PCT work product was a desireable goal, so the announcement of the expansion of the program is a welcome one, and the ILPTO leadership is to be applauded for its work. Now that the ILPTO is a PCT Search Authority - one that at present only conducts searches for Israeli applicants, and therefore is expected to issue its search reports in a timely manner - and PCT searches in Israel presently cost about half of what they cost at the USPTO, Israeli PCT applicants for whom the grant of a US patent is important (in other words, nearly all of them) will now to need to seriously consider choosing the Israel ISA.
[Corrected] Curiously, there wasn't an announcement of the PCT-PPH program with the USA on the front page of the ILPTO's web site or via its email distribution list, even though the ILPTO is usually quick to inform the public of agreements like this, but an announcement about the PCT-PPH program was buried on the PPH page itself (see below for a screen shot of that page taken today). Moreover, the form for requesting PPH treatment has been revised to allow for PPH requests based on the results of PCT search and examination.
