Patents, Request for Continued Examination, Pharmaceutical Patents

Need to FAST Track Your Patent? The USPTO increases the Annual Limit to 20,000

MoFo Life Sciences on 7/10/2025

Effective July 8, 2025, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) expanded the availability of prioritized examination, increasing the limit on the number of requests from 15,000 to 20,000 in a fiscal year. The 20,000...more

“Equal to” Means “Not Exceed” when Determining Patent Term Adjustment

McDermott Will & Emery on 2/28/2019

The US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit found that the US Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) erred in calculating a patent term adjustment (PTA) for a patent covering an oral osmotic form of an antihypertensive drug,...more

Client Alert: Federal Circuit PTA Decision Favors Applicants with Multiple Co-Pending Domestic and Foreign Applications

Neal, Gerber & Eisenberg LLP on 2/4/2019

The Federal Circuit recently held that the USPTO’s calculation of “applicant delays” related to Patent Term Adjustment (PTA) is contrary to the plain language of the PTA Statute....more

When Does an RCE Stop the PTA Clock?

Foley & Lardner LLP on 2/16/2018

In Novartis v. Lee (Fed. Cir. 2014), the Federal Circuit agreed with the USPTO that “time spent in a continued examination” does not count towards the three years the USPTO is allotted to examine a patent before if it must...more

Extension of U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s Cancer Immunotherapy Pilot Program

Mintz - Intellectual Property Viewpoints on 6/29/2017

On June 19, 2017, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) announced that it would be extending the Cancer Immunotherapy Pilot Program, which permits patent applications pertaining to cancer immunotherapy to be examined...more

USPTO Pilots Expedited Patent Appeal Program But at What Price?

Foley & Lardner LLP on 6/19/2015

In a June 15, 2015 Federal Register Notice, the USPTO announced the Expedited Patent Appeal Pilot program, which will run until 2,000 ex parte patent appeals are expedited under the program, or until June 20, 2016, whichever...more