What is the difference between RP, PPH and validation?

The main difference between RP, PPH and validation relates to their application, who decides to apply them and the effect of their application in the partner countries.

The RP programme is an ”office-driven” scheme for the standardised reuse of EPO search and examination results with a view to enabling partner offices to enhance and expedite the processing of subsequent national/regional applications with the same priority date. While the partner offices commit to systematically reuse EPO work results in their patent grant processes in a timely manner and to the maximum extent practicable, they will however perform the substantive examination of the related patent applications in line with their own national/regional legal frameworks. The final decision on the grant remains with the national office.

In contrast, the Patent Prosecution Highway (PPH) is applicant-driven and allows an applicant to request accelerated patent prosecution at a participating patent office where a corresponding application has already been found to contain patentable/allowable claims at a PPH partner office. The programme allows partner offices to reuse work already available and, hence, process applications in an accelerated manner. Under PPH, the application is processed out of turn and the examiner is explicitly asked to take into consideration available work results. PPH-based utilisation at the EPO and most PPH offices follows the "discretionary approach", which means that examiners will themselves define the extent of reliance on the prior work results on a case-by-case basis.

Finally, the validation system provides applicants with a simple and cost‑effective procedure for obtaining protection for a European patent in a validation state. If an applicant submits a request for validation and pays the validation fee in due time, European patent applications (direct and Euro‑PCT filings) and patents can be validated in these countries, where they will in principle have the same effect as national applications and patents, will be subject to national law and will enjoy essentially the same protection as patents that the EPO grants for EPC contracting states. While the validation systems is based on the relevant national law, and hence subject to the national validation rules of the country concerned, the patent office in the validation state will not conduct any further formal or substantive examination but accept and reuse the result of the examination at the EPO.