The Australian government released amendments on October 17 2007 that effectively remove the requirement for applicants and patentees to lodge foreign patent search results at the Australian Patent Office.
The amendments took effect on October 22 2007 and require that, for standard patents, results completed before April 22 be filed only for applications that were advertised as accepted before July 22. Results do not need to be filed for other applications.
The official notice explaining the change can be found here.
