On June 10, 2025, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) announced that, after nearly 20 years, it will be discontinuing its Accelerated Examination Program for utility applications on July 10, 2025.
The USPTO’s Accelerated Examination Program was implemented in 2006 as a way for Applicants to petition for an accelerated examination procedure that would lead to a patentability decision within 12 months or less. This provided a meaningful acceleration since the overall pendency to receive a first Office Action was approximately 20 months for fiscal year 2024, for instance.
While initially popular, the number of petitions for the Accelerated Examination Program has declined substantially following the introduction of the USPTO’s Prioritized Patent Examination Program, also known as “Track One.” A contributing factor is that a petition under Track One can accelerate examination without having to meet several requirements of the Accelerated Examination Program, including performing a pre-examination search and providing an examination support document. Further, the additional requirements under the Accelerated Examination Program have led to approximately one-third of its requests being denied.
As a result, fewer than 100 Applicants have taken advantage of the Accelerated Examination Program in each of fiscal years 2014 through 2024, as compared to nearly 10,000 Track One petitions being filed during the first seven months of the current fiscal year.
The USPTO noted that, as opposed to the more straightforward Track One program, the resource demands of the Accelerated Examination Program are also in tension with its broader efforts to reduce overall pendency.
Thus, the USPTO ultimately decided that “the Accelerated Examination Program does not provide a sufficient benefit to the public or the patent system to justify the cost of continuing the program for utility applications,” in view of the availability of the largely redundant and far more popular Track One program, which is better equipped to achieve the objective of accelerating examination and reducing overall pendency of applications. The Accelerated Examination Program will, however, remain in effect for design patent applications.
This discontinuation follows soon after the expiration of the Cancer Moonshot Expedited Examination Pilot Program, which allowed for the acceleration of pendency to a first Office Action for certain applications in the field of oncology or smoking cessation.
Importantly, Applicants of utility applications still have options available for accelerating examination. This includes the popular Track One program, for which the USPTO anticipates further increasing the annual limit from 15,000 requests to 20,000 requests in 2025. Like the Accelerated Examination Program, the goal of the Track One program is to have a final disposition within 12 months. Latest statistics show that, under Track One, a first Office Action is issued approximately three months after filing the request, and a final disposition is reached approximately six months after the request. Another option for accelerating examination is to file a “petition to make special,” which is available if an inventor or joint inventor is at least 65 years of age or has a state of health such that the inventor “might not be available to assist in the prosecution of the application if it were to run its normal course.”
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