Japan-India Launches Patent Prosecution Highway:
India and Japan announced the Patent Prosecution Highway (PPH) programme in November 2019.
Highlights:
♦ In November of this year, India and Japan announced the Bilateral Patent Prosecution Highway (PPH) programme between the two countries.
♦ The Indian Patent Office (IPO) will only accept patent applications related to certain specific technical fields, such as computer science, electrical, electronic, information technology, physics, civil, machinery, textiles, automobiles, and metallurgy, according to a bilateral agreement between the Japan Patent Office (JPO) and the Indian Patent Office (IPO) technical fields.
♦ The patent prosecution highway is a set of initiatives aimed at speeding up the patent application process by sharing information among participating countries` patent offices.
♦ Benefits can be obtained for each participating patent office by leveraging prior work done by patent offices in other participating countries. As a result, the work can be completed concurrently, reducing examination workload and improving patent quality.
China, Russia Look To Deepen Best Ties:
Sergei Lavrov, Russia`s foreign minister, is in China for an important visit.
Highlights:
♦ The visit took place shortly after the Alaska talks on China-US relations. Following the first summit of the Group of Quad Leaders (India, Australia, Japan and the United States).
♦ He said that the current Russian-Chinese partnership is the best in history.
♦ He claims that Western countries, especially the United States, are obstructing the creation of a genuinely multi-polar democratic world because they want to maintain their dominance of the global economy and politics at all costs, and combine their will with the requirements put on other countries.
♦ Russia and China are pursuing a positive and unified agenda in this regard, and they hope that the international governance system will be fair and democratic, run smoothly, and built on the foundation of extensive cooperation between countries and their integration initiatives.
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