Vietnam and Singapore’s Intellectual Property Offices launch pilot project on joint search and examination

The Intellectual Property Office of Vietnam (IPVN) and the Intellectual Property Office of Singapore (IPOS) launched the Collaborative Search and Examination (CS&E) pilot program on March 1, 2023 to provide applicants with search and examination results from participating offices at an early stage in the patent grant process. In August 2024, the program was updated and revised to expand the types of patent applications under the program and extend the deadline to better meet the needs of applicants.

Major changes to the CS&E program include:

• The requirement that the first application must first be filed in Singapore or Vietnam has been removed. Now, a request for accelerated examination can be made for an application claiming priority or a divisional application.
• The project has been extended to February 28, 2027.
• The requirement that the CS&E request must be filed simultaneously with the filing date in Vietnam or Singapore has been cancelled. According to the revised content, the request for accelerated examination can be filed together with the request for substantive examination, so that the applicant can request accelerated examination of the corresponding application in the second country after obtaining the CS&E report, that is, no later than 10 months from the date of receipt of the CS&E request.
• If the applicant has already filed a request for substantive examination in the second country, the applicant may still submit the CS&E report of the first country within two months from the date of issuance of the CS&E report to request accelerated examination.

In addition to the CS&E program, Vietnam has also signed bilateral agreements on accelerated patent examination with Japan, South Korea, and ASEAN:

• Patent Prosecution Highway (PPH) Pilot Program in Cooperation with the Japan Patent Office
• PPH pilot project with the Korean Intellectual Property Office
• ASEAN Patent Examination Cooperation (ASPEC) Program.
  

The above three projects mainly involve the submission of foreign examination results of corresponding applications to IPVN, while the CS&E project involves two patent offices searching and examining the same patent application and exchanging results.