Primary Tool for Expediting the Procedure
Legal Basis
Under Decision No. 2015-136 of the INPI Director, the INPI has established an expedited patent grant procedure.
Conditions
Form of the Request
The request for expedited procedure must be submitted electronically via the online service by the applicant or the proprietor (Article 2, Decision No. 2015-136 of the INPI Director).
Form of the Application to Be Expedited
The application for which expedited procedure is requested must have been filed via the INPI’s e-procedure service (and not on paper or via EPOLINE) (Article 1, Decision No. 2015-136 of the INPI Director).
Date
The request for expedited procedure must be filed (Article 2, Decision No. 2015-136 of the INPI Director):
- at the time of filing,
- or no later than 10 months from the filing date.
Official Fee
This request is free of charge.
Early Publication
It must be accompanied by a request for early publication (Article L612-21 of the French Intellectual Property Code (CPI), 1° and Article R612-39 CPI) (Article 2, Decision No. 2015-136 of the INPI Director).
Early publication will occur at the earlier of the following two deadlines (Article 2, Decision No. 2015-136 of the INPI Director):
- 10 months from the filing date;
- 18 months from the priority date.
Confidentiality
In principle, there is no specific reason for this request to be excluded from public inspection.
Consequence
A patent is then granted within 20 months (Article 5, Decision No. 2015-136 of the INPI Director) unless:
- the application is classified as secret by national defense;
- the search report is partial or could not be established within 10 months from the filing date;
- the applicant amends the claims;
- the applicant requests an extension of the time limit to respond to the search report;
- the applicant fails to pay the publication and grant official fee;
- a third party submits observations on the application.
Of course, there is no penalty if the INPI does not grant the patent within the prescribed time limit.
Other Means of Expediting the Procedure
At this stage, we are not aware of any other method to expedite the procedure in France.