Changes to Permit Delayed Submission of Certain Requirements for Prioritized Examination

The Leahy-Smith America Invents Act includes provisions for prioritized examination of patent applications (also referred to as "Track I"), which have been implemented by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (Office) in previous rulemakings. This interim rule simplifies the Track I prioritized examination practice to reduce the number of requests for prioritized examination that must be dismissed. In order to enable rapid processing and examination of those applications, the previous rulemakings provided that an application having a request for Track I prioritized examination requires, upon filing of the application, an inventor's oath or declaration and all required fees, and contains no more than four independent claims, thirty total claims, and no multiple dependent claims. Accordingly, any request for Track I prioritized examination not meeting all of the requirements on filing must be dismissed. The Office has found that many such dismissals are due to the application as filed not including a properly executed inventor's oath or declaration, not including the excess claims fees or application size fee due, or improperly including a multiple dependent claim or claims in excess of the permitted number. The Office has determined that the time periods for meeting those requirements when filing a request for Track I prioritized examination could be expanded while maintaining the Office's ability to timely examine the patent application.