On January 17, 2025, China’s National Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA) released the “Guidelines for the Belt and Road Accelerated Examination Pilot Program” (“一带一路”专利加快审查试点项目指南), effective January 20, 2025. The Belt and Road initiative is a global infrastructure program launched by China to invest in land and sea corridors to connect China to the world. The Pilot Program, which is somewhat analogous to the Patent Prosecution Highway (PPH), allows for accelerated patent examination in China when a Belt and Road country’s patent office indicates at least one claim in corresponding family member is allowable.
While the Pilot Program envisions including all Belt and Road countries (perhaps including more than 150 countries that signed a Memorandum of Understanding with China per Fudan University), it appears that Türkiye may be the only participating country at this time.
The period of the Pilot Program will commence on January 20, 2025 and end on January 19, 2027. Under the Pilot Program, the total number of applications to be accepted by CNIPA will be limited to 1000 per year, the maximum number of applications from each participating office will be limited to 100 per year. After the expiration of this two-year period, an evaluation will be conducted to determine whether the pilot program should be extended.
Requirements to participate include:
(a) The CNIPA application shall have at least one corresponding application in the participating office, which has determined that one or more claims of the corresponding application is/are patentable/allowable.
(b) All claims in the CNIPA application must sufficiently correspond to one or more of those claims determined to be patentable/allowable in the corresponding application.
(c) The CNIPA application must have been published.
(d) The CNIPA application must have entered into substantive examination stage. Note that as an exception, the applicant may file a request for accelerated examination simultaneously with the Request for Substantive Examination.
(e) The CNIPA has not begun examination of the application at the time of filing the request for accelerated examination.
(f) The CNIPA application must be electronic patent application.
More information can be found here (Chinese and English).