ASPEC+ and ASEAN’s next step in IP cooperation
By Qi Jun Kwong (Affiliated Research Fellow, RCLIP; Hokkaido University)
Anyone who has spent time with ASEAN’s IP initiatives learns its modus operandi soon enough: soft-law instruments, open-ended commitments, and language calibrated to bind no one (materially). But some recent shifts hint at a deeper level of cooperation, and patent prosecution is where the movement shows most clearly. Glacial – but movement none the less.
Some context. The 1995 Framework Agreement on Intellectual Property Cooperation tasked ASEAN Member States (AMS), under Article 1(4), to “explore the possibility of setting up an ASEAN patent system, including an ASEAN Patent Office, if feasible.” The exploration persisted for a quarter of a century. Only in the 2021 Mid-Term Review of the 2016–2025 IPR Action Plan did anyone get round to conduct a feasibility study of an “ASEAN Patent System.” The current ASEAN Intellectual Property Rights Action Plan 2026–2030, nested within the ASEAN Community Vision 2045 and the AEC Strategic Plan 2026–2030, calls for implementation of the feasibility studies (now plural) conducted of an “ASEAN IP Registration System.”
As of May 2026, there is no sight of an ASEAN Patent Office. What an “ASEAN IP Registration System” would look like remains anyone’s guess. But what ASEAN does have, and has had since 2009, is the ASEAN Patent Examination Co-operation (ASPEC). The programme allows an applicant to take a search and examination report from the first office and hands it to a second office, in the hope of speeding things along. The second office is bound by precisely, nothing in it. Filing statistics here.
Enter ASPEC+, launched on April 2026, an optional track within the ASPEC structure. Process-wise, it changes two things. The first change concerns who carries the report. Under ordinary ASPEC the applicant did the carrying; under ASPEC+ it is the nominated “Office A” that conducts search and examination and then sends its findings to one or more “Office B.” Office B does likewise, and the reports travel round the table among all selected offices. The second change concerns what those offices are then meant to do with the reports in front of them. They are to “review, discuss, and consider if it is possible to issue identical or similar examination results.” If they cannot, each office still issues its own report with its own conclusions; but at the very least each conclusion will at least have been arrived at after the others have been heard. The whole cycle is aimed at completion within ten to fourteen months from the date of the ASPEC+ request.
ASPEC+ in context
ASPEC+ marks a genuine structural shift. Where ASPEC was in effect a document relay, ASPEC+ introduces a deliberate cooperative process among the offices themselves, with a committed timeline attached. For an applicant pursuing national patents in several ASEAN jurisdictions at once, this seems to be a welcoming development. The more interesting long-term question is whether sustained procedural convergence can in time produce substantive convergence in examination standards. Repeat interactions among the same examiner cohorts, on corresponding applications with identical or sufficiently corresponding claims, may yet generate some form of shared interpretive practice.
But this is ASEAN, which means the “ASEAN Way” must have its say. A preference for sovereignty and consensus sets the ceiling on what any ASEAN initiative can do. What ASPEC+ asks of participating offices is, in the end, only that they discuss and consider. As the official guidelines put it: “Each office retains its responsibility to issue examination results in accordance with its national legislation and practices, with no obligation to conform to the findings of other AMS IP Offices.” An office may freely deviate and the guidelines do not require it to say why (why not… though?).
ASPEC+ also involves the same nine AMS as legacy ASPEC, leaving out Myanmar and Timor-Leste – the latter having joined ASEAN only on 26 October 2025. Participation in ASPEC presupposes a national patent office capable of independent substantive examination and the digital infrastructure for exchanging reports. Neither country has yet met those thresholds, though changes seem to be underway. Myanmar has begun accepting patent and utility model applications following the entry into force of its Patent Law. Timor-Leste does not appear to publish information on substantive examination of patent, and it is unclear whether any patents have yet been granted there (see WIPO statistics here). Continued support is, however, being provided through the EU’s SCOPE IPR project, which runs until 2028.
Even among the nine AMS, participation is not uniform. The Philippines does not accept ASPEC+ requests for pharmaceutical patent applications. Malaysia excludes divisional applications, and participates only as “Office B,” which is to say it will receive and respond to reports but will not serve as a primary examining office. On this last point, our learned friend Dr Syaufiq Latif of MyIPO has suggested that the decision is one of operational policy, driven by considerations of examination capacity and resources rather than anything more principled.
The limits of ASPEC+ are accordingly apparent enough. It is not a unified examination system; no regional body reviews the outcomes, and there is no appeal in case of inconsistency. But the carve-outs are not aberrations. Each one is, in its way, an AMS’s judgment as to what mode of cooperation is compatible with its own national priorities or practical constraints. This, I think, is precisely the ASEAN Way (or the ASEAN Way+ since we’re at it) and why ASPEC+ is worth watching beyond its operational advantages.
The good, the bad, and the doctrinal
ASEAN has always presented itself as “outward-looking” (Art. 1(15)) ASEAN Charter), committed to adherence to multilateral trade rules (Art. 2(n), ASEAN Charter), and anchored in intra-ASEAN consensus and flexibility. ASEAN’s official lexicon for what it does – “work-sharing,” “cooperation,” “facilitation,” “mutual assistance,” are all carefully non-prescriptive. Doctrinally, scholars have given this mode a name: “interoperability,” in which cooperation operates at the procedural level without demanding substantive harmonisation. The underlying premise is always the ASEAN Way. When unanimity proves too costly, the ASEAN-minus-X formula is the region’s workaround, allowing those willing to proceed to do so without the rest.
So it is in patent prosecution. ASPEC+ operates alongside other accelerated patent prosecution routes, most notably the Patent Prosecution Highway (PPH). Five AMS – Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, and Viet Nam each maintain bilateral PPH with the Japan Patent Office (JPO). Singapore is the only AMS in the Global Patent Prosecution Highway, which JPO also participates. This means that a favourable examination by the JPO is effectively accelerated across all six AMS.
There are signs, alongside the ASPEC+, that ASEAN is edging towards something more. The ASEAN Common Guidelines on Patent Examination, developed with the support of the European Patent Office (EPO) and published in 2023, is s serious piece of comparative work which mapped examination standards and practices across AMS, and were drafted with the express hope that they might in due course serve as basis for the harmonisation of law and practice. The guidelines again, mandate nothing. But a shared reference point, even an unenforceable one, might propel ASEAN further than expected.
Impact and open questions
The 2026–2030 Action Plan speaks of “regional harmonisation;” ASPEC+ may be the closest working illustration of what that phrase could come to mean. The programme is incremental, operational, and deliverable now. It requires none of the political conditions that a unified regional patent system would demand, and yet it moves AMS from passive reference to active coordination.
However, whether ASPEC+ is the permanent substitute for an “ASEAN IP Registration System,” or a precursor to something greater, will turn on political will among the AMS. That will, so far, is manifested in a comfortable commitment to “review, discuss, and consider.” The drive behind ASPEC+ hints at a little more than that, but whether ASEAN continues to deliver any of it remains to be seen.