The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and the National Industrial Property Office of the Dominican Republic (ONAPI) signed a Joint Declaration of Intent to initiate a cooperation program to expedite prosecution of patent applications filed in both offices, known as the Accelerated Patent Grant (APG), which will continue for five years. This program will allow Applicants to expedite prosecution at any stage in a counterpart application pending in the Dominican Republic based on a U.S. patent grant.
Meanwhile, the Brazilian Patent Office (INPI) has recently joined the Global Patent Prosecution Highway (GPPH), a multilateral cooperation program existing since 2014 and also including other 27 Patent Offices in the world. The GPPH aims to accelerate prosecution of counterpart patent applications pending using favorable decisions of other patent offices that are also part of the GPPH agreement. Brazil joins Colombia (2017), Peru (2019) and Chile (2020), as part of this agreement.