Continuation Application/Request Continued Examination (RCE)

 

To implement RCE practice, the Office has added 37 CFR 1.114 to provide a procedure under which an applicant may obtain continued examination of an application by filing a submission and paying a specified fee, even if the application is under a final rejection, appeal, or a notice of allowance. Under United States patent practice, an RCE or continuation patent application is an application which claims priority from a previously filed application. Usually a continuation application is filed when the Patent Office has responded to the parent application with a final office action, but the applicant wishes to revise the claims again. A continuation application receives the priority date of its parent application. A continuation application is often filed using the file wrapper continuation (FWC) administrative procedure.

 

Continuation-In-Part (CIP) Application

 

The United States patent practice allows the owner of a pending patent application to file a what is called a “continuation-in-part" patent application. A CIP patent application is an application which contains new matter in conjunction with a previous patent application (parent application), and which was filed at a time when the parent application was pending. If such an application issues as a patent, then the patent has multiple priority dates. Some claims of the patent enjoy the priority date of the parent application, while other claims might enjoy only the filing date of the CIP application as their priority date.

 

Divisional Application

 

A divisional patent application is an application claiming priority from a previously filed patent application (parent application) in which more than one invention was disclosed. The divisional application has claims directed to a different invention than that claimed in the parent application. The most common way that this happens is that the Patent Office rules that your application contains more than one invention, communicating this in what is called a "restriction requirement". The applicant then elects to pursue one of the inventions in the parent application, and optionally submits a "divisional application" containing the claims regarding another of the inventions. The divisional application is entitled to the filing date of the parent application as its priority date.

U.S. Continuation Patent Applications

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© 2006 International Patent Group, LLC

 

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