Singapore strengthens PPH cooperation with China and France

10 September 2026

Singapore has strengthened its Patent Prosecution Highway (“PPH”) cooperation with China and France.

China

From 1 September 2026, the PPH pilot between the Intellectual Property Office of Singapore (“IPOS”) and the China National Intellectual Property Administration (“CNIPA”) has been extended to 31 August 2031.

The enhanced arrangement with CNIPA will further provide applicants with greater flexibility as applicants will no longer be required to have filed their earliest application with either IPOS or CNIPA to use the programme.

For more information on the PPH programme between IPOS and CNIPA, please click here.

France

From 1 September 2026, IPOS' PPH programme with the National Institute of Industrial Property of France (“INPI France”) has become permanent.

For more information on the PPH programme between IPOS and INPI France, please click here.

Benefits of PPH programmes

The PPH offers applicants an option to obtain earlier patent examination outcomes by relying on examination conducted by participating intellectual property offices. Eligible applicants benefit from the following:

  • High success rate: An average grant rate of 94% in Singapore.
  • Faster office action: About six months to the first office action at IPOS for PPH requests filed from 1 July 2026.
  • Fewer office actions: About 70% of patents granted by IPOS at the first office action.
  • 30% fee savings: Applicants pay only 70% of prevailing official fees for PPH requests filed with new request for search and/or examination report from 3 August 2026 to 31 December 2027 (both dates inclusive).

For more details, please refer to the IPOS Patent Prosecution Highway webpage.

Comment

The strengthened PPH cooperation with China and France is expected to provide applicants with greater flexibility to leverage favourable examination results obtained in China or France to accelerate examination of corresponding Singapore applications, potentially reducing prosecution timelines and providing greater certainty on patent protection in Singapore.

However, applicants should note that IPOS is not obliged to grant a patent based on a favourable examination result from the Office of Earlier Examination (“OEE”). The outcome of the Singapore examination remains subject to IPOS’s independent assessment and may be affected by, for instance, prior art that was not identified during the OEE’s search and examination, or differences in patent law and examination practice between jurisdictions that give rise to issues that were not considered or considered differently by the OEE.

Applicants should also bear in mind that the PPH requires all claims in the IPOS application to sufficiently correspond to one or more allowable or patentable claims in the OEE application. Claims are considered to sufficiently correspond where, accounting for differences arising from translation and claim format requirements, they have the same or similar scope, or where the IPOS claims are narrower in scope. A claim may be narrower where it has been further limited by an additional technical feature that is supported by the specification. Hence, applicants seeking PPH should not expect to pursue claims broader than those allowed by the OEE.

Accordingly, while the PPH does not guarantee grant in Singapore, it should nevertheless play a significant role in expediting examination and facilitating a more comprehensive examination by IPOS. Applicants should therefore view the PPH as an important prosecution acceleration mechanism, rather than as a substitute for a separate assessment of the application under Singapore patent law.

Reference materials

The following materials are available on the IPOS Patent Prosecution Highway webpage: