From 1 July 2026, the Intellectual Property Office of Singapore (IPOS) aims to issue a first office action within about six months for Patent Prosecution Highway requests filed on or after that date, down from roughly ten months for existing requests. As the new standard moves into operational use, PPH becomes more useful not only as an acceleration route but also as a planning tool for funding, product launches and parallel prosecution.
A related cost measure will run from 3 August 2026 to 31 December 2027: where a PPH request is filed together with a new request for a search and/or examination report, only 70% of the prevailing official fee will be payable. Faster handling does not relax the patentability standard. Applicants should still ensure that the Singapore claims sufficiently correspond to claims found allowable or patentable by the partner office and that the PPH request is filed before substantive examination begins. For well-prepared cases, the combination offers earlier feedback and a lower official cost for coordinated search and examination.
