On 6 April 2026, ASEAN officially announced the launch of the ASEAN Patent Examination Cooperation Plus (ASPEC+) Programme.
Launched on 15 June 2009, ASPEC is ASEAN’s first regional patent work-sharing programme. It covers the intellectual property offices of nine ASEAN Member States, namely Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.
Over the past decade, ASPEC has facilitated the sharing of regional patent examination resources, effectively breaking the barriers of independent patent examination among ASEAN member states, significantly reducing duplicated examination work and saving time and manpower costs for patent applications.
The official launch of ASPEC+ marks a comprehensive upgrade of the regional IP examination cooperation system in Southeast Asia and further improves the regional patent protection ecosystem.
Key Upgrade Highlights
ASPEC+ delivers a multi-dimensional upgrade in terms of examination efficiency, examination quality, and resource utilization:
l Applicants may select any ASEAN Member State(AMS) IP Office based on their market priorities in ASEAN, to flexibly match regional market layout needs.
l Examination efficiency is significantly improved: applicants will receive the first official notification within 10 to 14 months to promptly confirm the status of their patent applications.
l Through the exchange of expertise among selected Offices, the quality of patent prior art search and examination is enhanced.
l Applicants may obtain highly consistent examination results from their selected Offices, effectively mitigating risks arising from inconsistent regional examination standards.
l ASEAN examination standards are becoming increasingly aligned, reducing the time and resource costs for enterprises pursuing regional patent protection.
ASPEC+ Eligibility Criteria
Applicants may participate in the ASPEC+ Programme only if all of the following conditions are met:
l The patent application must be a new request for search and substantive examination, or a pending application for which no official action has been issued.
l Applications share a priority claim, claim priority from each other, or are national phase applications of the same PCT application.
l The claims of the respective applications are identical or sufficiently correspond to each other.
l Applicants are required to submit an ASPEC+ request form and consent to the exchange of patent application information and documents among the AMS IP Offices.
l Applicants must comply with the requirements for local representative and address for service stipulated by the selected AMS IP Offices.
l If there are some defects in application materials, applicants must correct them within the prescribed time limit.
Notes
Applicants are reminded to observe the following restrictions when selecting target member states:The Philippines does not accept ASPEC+ requests for pharmaceutical patent applications. Malaysia does not accept ASPEC+ requests for divisional patent applications.
Source：https://www.aseanip.org/latest-news-events/2026/04/06/launch-of-the-asean-patent-examination-co-operation-plus-(aspec-)-programme
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