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12 May 2021

France : A speeded grant process for patent applications on ways to fight COVID!

Decision n°2021-65 from April 21st, 2021

The French National Industrial Property Institute (INPI) joined the national efforts to end the pandemic by setting up (under specific conditions) a speeded grant process for patent applications on ways to fight COVID-19. For these applications, the grant delay would indeed be shortened to 24 months after their filing date.

Which applications can benefit from this?

  • Patent applications for which a speeded grant process can be requested need to be on an anti-COVID treatment or device or to help diagnose or treat COVID. For these last ones, it is necessary for the application, before an appropriate authority, to have led to a clinical trial request, to a request for evaluating a COVID treatment, to a registration request on the validation platform for anti-COVID health devices, to a marketing authorisation request or, for medical devices only, to a request to evaluate their validity before an appropriate authority to obtain a CE marking;
  • Patent applications eligible are patent applications or utility certificates filed from June 1st, 2020, with the exception of patent applications filed as provisional applications.

What are the terms of this procedure?

  • The request for speeded grant has to be requested to the INPI by the applicant or by a representative (Industrial Property attorneys) with either a home or company address or company in the European Union or European Economic Area.
  • The request has to be filed within 10 months after the filing date of the patent application, electronically, following the rules set by the Decision n°2018-156 of the INPI Director.

An speeded grant process form for patent applications on ways to fight COVID can be found on the website www.inpi.fr

It is noteworthy that as the grant procedure depends on other dispositions (for example: procedures of divulgation and exploitation authorisation , publication, preliminary search report, and, when required, irregularity notifications), so It can be impossible in some cases to obtain a grant in 24 months.