Duong & Tran Intellectual Property

ASPEC Plus (ASPEC+) program – A new mechanism to harmonise substantive examination of patent applications among nine participating ASEAN countries

On 6 April 2026, the ASEAN Patent Examination Co-operation Plus (ASPEC+) program was officially launched. The ASPEC+ program is based on the existing ASPEC program with nine participating ASEAN Member States (“AMS”) Offices which are Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Lao PDR, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Viet Nam.

A short description of ASPEC+ program

Different from the ASPEC program, which operates sequentially and whereby a first positive AMS IP Office report is submitted to the second AMS IP Office with allowed claims to accelerate the substantive examination of the corresponding applications at the second AMS IP Office, the ASPEC+ program operates simultaneously, whereby multiple AMS IP Offices work collaboratively to deliver their respective first office actions within committed timelines (10 to 14 months from the date of completion of formalities).

The Applicant files an ASPEC+ request at the same time at the respective selected AMS IP Offices, indicating its preferred Office A and Office B(s). Office A conducts search and examination and prepares Office A’s report and shares its report with Office B(s). Office B(s) reviews Office A's report, conducts search and examination and prepares its report and shares its report with Office A and other Office B(s). Office A and Office B(s) then review, discuss, and consider if it is possible to issue identical or similar examination results:

  • If yes, the Offices will issue their respective national reports with identical or similar results.
  • If it is not possible due to different national legislation and practices, the Offices will issue their respective national reports with different examination results.

Finally, the Offices issue their respective national reports to the applicant.

There is no official fee for the ASPEC+ program. However, official search and examination fees must be paid at the respective selected AMS IP Offices.

Requirements

All of the following requirements must be met to qualify for the ASPEC+ program:

  • No office action or report has been issued at the time of filing the ASPEC+ request;
  • The request is for corresponding applications, i.e., the applications claim priority to each other, share a priority claim, or are national phase entries of the same PCT application;
  • Claim sets in the corresponding applications must be identical or sufficiently correspond to each other. Claims correspondence tables are required;
  • The request must meet the local representative or address for service requirements depending on the specific national laws of the selected AMS IP Offices. For Vietnam, the ASPEC+ request must be filed by a local IP agent if the applicants are foreign individuals who are not permanent residents of Vietnam, and foreign organizations and individuals who do not have production or business establishments in Vietnam.

Benefits for Applicants

  • Applicants can flexibly choose AMS IP Offices based on applicants’ market priorities;
  • Applicants can obtain enhanced search and examination results due to the exchange, review of search and examination results among the selected Offices;
  • Possibility of harmonising substantive examination of corresponding applications;
  • Possibility of optimising patent prosecution effort, time and resources by preparing simultaneous responses to identical or similar examination results.

For more details on the program, please visit AseanIP.

Since Vietnam is one of the participating ASEAN countries, applicants can consider the ASPEC+ program for their corresponding patent applications filed in Vietnam. If you need further advice, please contact: hanoi@duongtran.vn.