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The French Industrial Property Institute (INPI) and the Moroccan Office of Industrial and Commercial Property (OMPIC) sign a PPH agreement

This is also the first agreement of the kind signed between France and an African country. Since France’s INPI signed the first PPH agreement with the Japan Patent Office (JPO) on November 26, 2020, it has successively signed agreements with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), the Canadian Intellectual Property Office (CIPO), the Brazilian Office (INPI Brazil) and South Korea's IP Office (KIPO). The latest signing was with the China Intellectual Property Administration (CNIPA) on April 6, 2023.
The agreement signed between France's INPI and Morocco's OMPIC is set to take effect on November 1, 2023. Applicants will be able to request to expedite the issuance process for second patent applications submitted to OMPIC, whether through the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) applicable to the national application or the domestic application step in Morocco, provided that the claims contained in the latter are "sufficiently close" to the claims of the application that have been examined and determined patentable by INPI. Conversely, the PPH agreement will also apply to Moroccan applicants who wish to benefit from the expedited processing of patent applications in France. Either filed from Morocco or through the PCT, this expedited examination mechanism will be available in France.
It is worth noting that in terms of the number of patent applications submitted to the Moroccan patent authority, among all foreign applicants, French applicants ranked the second, next only to Americans. This is highly interesting once the French innovations can be protected in Morocco. Because the agreement will therefore benefit French applicants by opening up a new way to confidently save valuable time when applying for patents in Morocco.

(Above content is excerpted from the official website of the French INPI)
 
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