The USPTO is seeking comments for a published a notice of proposed rulemaking regarding elimination of continued prosecution application (CPA) practice as to utility and plant patent applications. The notice states that the American Inventors Protection Act of 1999 provides for continued examination of a utility or plant applications at the request of the applicant. Hence, no need for continued prosecution application (CPA) practice as to utility and plant applications appears to be necessary. An applicant for a utility or plant patent may also continue to effectively obtain further examination of the application by filing a continuing application under section 1.53(b). Since RCE practice does not apply to design applications, CPA practice will remain in place for design applications.
RCE, or Request for Continued Examination, practice allows an applicant to simply extend the examination process, without the necessary overhead of filing a CPA and allows the applicant the chance to save the patent application for the same cost as the CPA. Having the option of both the RCE and the CPA practices allows the applicant to choose the optimal strategy for pursuing final resolution of the application. "The elimination of the CPA will eliminate a very flexible tool that, in one form or another, has been available to practitioners for years," states Davis Gilmer of Hughes & Luce. "It forces the client to decide between a fast turnaround that is expensive on a per request basis, or a not so fast turnaround that may yield better results."
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