The USPTO issued a release stating:
Beginning July 1, the USPTO will again accept new international applications to the IP5 Offices Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) Collaboration Search and Examination (CS&E) pilot.
The five largest intellectual property offices in the world (IP5) launched this pilot on July 1, 2018. It allows examiners from all five offices, with different working languages, to collaborate on the search and examination of a single international application. The result is an international search report and written opinion from the chosen international searching authority based on contributions from all participating offices. The second year of the pilot will run from July 1, 2019, to June 30, 2020. View the current number of applications accepted from each office on the World Intellectual Property Organization website.
More information on the pilot is available in the published 2018 Federal Register Notice and the USPTO's CS&E pilot webpage. For questions and concerns about the CS&E pilot, contact Deputy Director of the International Patent Legal Administration Michael Neas at (571) 272-3289 or michael.neas@uspto.gov.
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