The Intellectual Property Office of Singapore (IPOS) has launched a pilot initiative to enhance their Patent Prosecution Highway (PPH) programmes to better support businesses in using PPH for examination of their patent applications. Applicants may obtain a refund of up to 30% in official fees paid for examination requests if a request for acceleration using PPH is filed from 15 September 2025 to 31 December 2027 (both dates inclusive).
PPH is a cooperative program among patent offices that allows applicants to accelerate the examination of a patent application by leveraging on positive examination results from another participating office. IPOS is a participating office of the GPPH programme which has 28 participating offices, and has bilateral PPH programmes with the IP offices of China, Mexico, Europe, Saudi Arabia, France, and Malaysia. By using PPH to accelerate examination of Singapore patent applications, applicants can expect a higher chance (94%) of patent grant, faster first office actions within 10 months, and fewer office actions with about 70% of Singapore patents granted at the first office action.
A request for PPH may be filed at the time of filing an examination request, or at any time after the examination request has been filed but before examination has started. Applicants who have requested examination of their patent applications can still request PPH and obtain a partial refund of the examination fees if examination has not yet started on their patent applications. Refunds are processed automatically once the request for PPH is accepted by IPOS, and applicants can expect to receive the refund from IPOS within 1-2 months.
For a request for search & examination, the refund amount will be S$615. For a request for search & examination of a Singapore national phase application where the ISR has been established by IPOS, the refund amount will be S$315. For a request for examination using existing search results, the refund amount will be S$426.
The pilot initiative benefits applicants who have multi-jurisdictional patent portfolios with prosecution cost savings and faster patent grants in Singapore. We encourage applicants to review their portfolios and identify Singapore patent applications that can take advantage, especially if examination requests were only recently filed or if there are foreign counterparts with positive examination results. Please contact us if you have any questions on how this pilot program can benefit you.