Patent Office Announces New Post-Prosecution Pilot Program For Responding To Final Rejections

The Program

On July 11, 2016, the Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) launched the Post Prosecution Pilot (P3) Program, which affords patent applicants an attractive alternative to the procedures currently available for responding to "finally" rejected patent applications.

Generally, after a patent application has been "finally" rejected, an applicant may continue pursuing the application by accepting only allowed claims (if any), filing an appeal, or filing an amendment with a request for continued examination (RCE). These latter two options are expensive and can take large amounts of time.

Over the past few years, the PTO has piloted two test programs that provided additional options to streamline the "after final" process. The first was the Pre-Appeal Brief Conference Pilot Program.¹ It allows an applicant to file an abbreviated appeal by requesting that a panel of three experienced examiners review the bases for the final rejection prior to the applicant