The Patent Prosecution Highway (PPH) is a set of initiatives for providing accelerated patent prosecution procedures by sharing information between some patent offices.[1] It also permits each participating patent office to benefit from the work previously done by the other patent office, with the goal of reducing examination workload and improving patent quality.[2]
An updated "PPH 2.0" system under the program name "Mottainai" (a Japanese word meaning "wasteful") began among several national patent offices in mid-2011.[3]
The PPH is a work-sharing scheme under which applicants may request that their applications be processed in an accelerated manner under certain conditions.