Korea Patent Prosecution Highway (PPH): Requirements, Documents & Fees

Already received a favorable "allowable" result abroad — but does your Korean application have to wait out the standard examination queue all over again? It doesn't. The Patent Prosecution Highway (PPH) lets you use a positive examination result from a foreign office, or from the PCT international phase, to request priority (accelerated) examination at the Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO).

This guide covers the three types of PPH, the filing requirements, the documents you must submit, and the costs — from a practitioner's point of view. It draws on KIPO's official Procedure for Requesting Priority Examination under IP5 PPH and Global PPH and the current Notice on Requesting Priority Examination of Patents and Utility Models.

What is the Patent Prosecution Highway (PPH)?

PPH is a framework under which, when your application (which relies on a foreign application as its priority basis) contains claims that a foreign IP office has found allowable, KIPO refers to that result and grants priority (accelerated) examination — so you obtain your patent faster and more efficiently. It is an international cooperation program in which two offices share work product to reduce the examination burden.

PPH runs as IP5 PPH among the five offices that handle about 80% of the world's patent filings (IP5 — Korea, the US, China, Europe (EPO), and Japan), and as Global PPH, which brings in many additional offices. Both launched on 6 January 2014; IP5 PPH was extended for another three years from 6 January 2026. As of January 2026, roughly 40 offices participate.

Three types — which one fits you?

PPH branches by what result you rely on. Rely on a foreign office's examination result and it is ordinary PPH; rely on the PCT international-phase result and it is PCT-PPH.

Requirements — the four for ordinary PPH

To request Korean priority examination via ordinary PPH, all four conditions below must be met. (Your Korean application = the subject application; the counterpart abroad = the corresponding application.)

1. Same earliest priority date — the subject application and the corresponding application must share the same earliest date (the earlier of the filing date or priority date).
2. An allowable claim exists — the corresponding application must have at least one claim that the foreign office found allowable in its most recent examination.
3. Claims correspond — every claim of the subject application must correspond to those allowable claims (identical, or narrowed by limiting/adding features). If not, amend them to correspond.
4. Request for examination filed — the subject application must have a request for examination on file (you may file it together with the priority-examination request).

PCT-PPH requirements — using the international-phase result

If a claim received a positive finding — novelty, inventive step, and industrial applicability all present — in the PCT International Search (ISA) or International Preliminary Examination (IPEA), you can file PCT-PPH. The supporting document is the WO/ISA, WO/IPEA, or IPER. The remaining requirements (same earliest date, claim correspondence, request for examination) are the same as ordinary PPH.

Documents — what you must submit

A PPH priority-examination request consists of the request for priority examination plus the PPH request statement (Form No. 3 for PPH; Form No. 6 for PCT-PPH), attaching the supporting documents below.

The claims correspondence table is the heart of a PPH request. For each claim of your Korean application, list the corresponding "allowable claim number" and give a concrete basis — whether the two claims are identical, or which features you limited or added. Worked examples are included in the request-statement forms (Attachments 4 and 5).

Costs — is there an extra PPH surcharge?

There is no KIPO surcharge for choosing PPH. You pay the same priority-examination request fee as any other priority-examination case. If you file through iphere, the estimated cost (government fee + service fee) is as follows.

The service fee above covers eligibility review, translation, and the correspondence table. The examination-request fee (which scales with the number of claims) is separate, and claim amendments may be added depending on the case. For priority examination in general, see our Korea priority examination guide.

Procedure and speed

• When the requirements are met, no separate decision granting priority examination is issued. Instead you receive an early office action (examination begins), which tells you the request was accepted.
• If requirements are lacking, you are asked to cure the defect; if you do not respond, the priority-examination request is ultimately dismissed.
• The priority-examination track starts examination far earlier than the standard queue. KIPO has steadily shortened PPH turnaround (under PPH eXtra, it reports an average of within three months to the first office action).

When PPH is worth it

• You have a corresponding application that already received a decision to grant or an allowable-claim notice in the US, Japan, China, Europe (EPO), etc.
• Your PCT Written Opinion (WO/ISA) is favorable (novelty, inventive step, and industrial applicability all positive).
• You need a fast Korean grant for fundraising, technology transfer, or enforcement.

In short: if you hold a positive result from a foreign office or the PCT international phase, PPH is the most efficient way to accelerate a Korean grant with no extra surcharge. You simply need the requirements (earliest date, claim correspondence, request for examination) and the documents (request statement, office action, prior art, correspondence table).