Accelerated Patent Examination
Overview
The U.S. Patent Office has between about a 1.5 year and 5 year backlog before responding with even a first Office Action. If you're over 65 or are patenting technology in specific area, you can automatically cut in front of the line. For the rest of us, it is a lot more complicated an expensive. You can file an international application under the "Patent Prosecution Highway" (article to follow on this website) and petition the U.S. Patent Office to examinie your application based on your application in a foreign country, or you can try the accellerated patent examination procedure. It generally is not recommended to use this procedure, but here is how it works.
Requirements
1) File a "Petition for Accellerated Examination" with your initial patent filing.
2) File your application electronically. (All applications filed by the Law Office of Michael J. Feigin, Esq. are filed electronically.)
3) File no more than 20 claims with up to 3 independent claims. (For a non-accelerated application, this is same number which is included with the basic U.S. Patent Office filing fees.)
4) Submit an Information Disclosure Statement (IDS) with a maximum of 20 prior art references which are material to the patentability of your invention.
5) Submit an "Examination Support Document" which explains in detail why each claim in your application is patentable over the prior art references with pinpoint citations.
6) Results and methodology of your search for prior art.
Why the Accelerated Patent Examination Should be Done with Caution
Many petitions for accelerated patent examination at the U.S. Patent Office are rejected. If there is a a problem with any of the above items, you are given one month to correct the problem. If it is still not satisfactory to the Patent Office, then your application gets kicked out of the program and becomes a regularly filed patent application. You will also have put a lot more information on the record about why you and/or your Attorney believes your application is patentable over the prior art. (In litigation, these disclosures can be used against you.)
While the benefits of Accellerated Patent Examination are great - you may have a patent in six months or less which would otherwise take years - the preparation costs are about two to three times as high as for regular prosecution. Each claim has to be reviewed and shown to be patentable over the prior art. There is also no gurantee that they U.S. Patent office will accept your petition. That being said, if you wish to take the risk and are willing to spend the extra money for a quickly issued Patent, then go for it!
