On 6^th April 2026, a new ASEAN Patent Examination Co-Operation Plus, ASPEC+ has been launched by the nine participating ASEAN Member States (AMS) IP Office to further bolster ASEAN attractiveness as an IP hub.

ASPEC+ draws upon the original ASPEC regional patent work-sharing framework, but has several key differences as follows:

The advantages of ASPEC+ are:

• Selection of preferred AMS IP Offices based on specific market priorities in ASEAN.
• AMS IP Offices are committed to issue a first Office Action within 10-14 months across multiple patent applications in ASEAN, providing certainty of the status of the applications.
• Higher-quality search and examination outcomes are provided through the direct exchange of expertise between selected offices.
• Possibility of harmonizing and issuing identical or similar examination results between AMS IP Offices, resulting in consistent examination standards across ASEAN
• Optimize prosecution efforts, time resources through coordinated, simultaneous responses to harmonized examination results.

The requirements and important details for ASPEC+ are:

• The request must be filed at the respective AMS IP Office for applications:

1. via regular filing mode at selected AMS IP Office for new search and examination request / substantive examination request, or
2. via email to the selected AMS IP Office for a pending search and examination request / substantive examination request, wherein no written opinion / office actions or reports has been issued,
   1. For both a) and b), the ASPEC+ form and claim correspondence table must be submitted at the same time at selected AMS IP Office.
   2. Request is free but official search and examination fees of selected AMS IP Office still apply.
   3. Filing language is in English.

• The patent applications must be linked by sharing a priority claim, claiming priority to one another, or originating as national phase entries from the same PCT application.
• Applications should have identical set of claims or sufficiently correspond to each other.
• The request must comply with local representative and address-for-service requirements established by the laws of each selected AMS IP Office.
• If a deficiency is raised related to the ASPEC+ request, the applicant must respond to the deficiency within an imposed timeline by the respective selected AMS IP Office to ensure inclusion into the programme.
• Philippines does not accept ASPEC+ request for pharmaceutical patent applications and Malaysia does not accept ASPEC+ request for divisional applications.

Unlike traditional ASPEC, ASPEC+ allows selected AMS IP offices to simultaneously share and collectively coordinate their search and examination findings, therefore providing higher quality search and examination results, and also a greater likelihood in obtaining identical or closely aligned examination reports. Moreover, the selected AMS IP offices are committed to within 10-14 months provide a first Office Action, giving predictability of the ASEAN applications.

However, even though ASPEC+ aims to harmonize the examination results, legislative laws and practices of the individual AMS IP offices still applies. Hence, divergent conclusions may still apply, particularly patent eligibility for certain subject matter (such as medical use claims) differ in respective offices.  Additionally, timelines for requesting search and examination varies for each selected AMS IP Offices.

Consequently, while ASPEC+ makes regional filing faster and more predictable, careful prosecuting strategies are still required to handle different regional rules.