After Final Practice: Life After Final Rejection

​​Patently Strategic - Patent Strategy for Startups

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Your application just received a final rejection notice from the patent office. Now what? How final is final? The office owes you nothing at this point and without further action, your patent is dead. Good news, though – all may not be lost! Options for resuscitation are limited, but the patient isn’t yet a goner.

David Jackrel, President of Jackrel Consulting, leads a discussion along with our all star patent panel, digging into the specifics of After Final Practice (AFCP 2.0). After Final Practice is one of the three primary options for getting a rejected patent application on life support and breathing again. Among the three, it has the unique combination of being lesser known, but also requiring the least effort and expense, making it a wonderful target for a strategy discussion. The insider tips on best practices for working with examiners during this process are worth the listen, alone!

David is joined today by an exceptional group of IP experts including:

* Ashley Sloat, President and Director of Patent Strategy at Aurora Consulting
* Daniel Wright, Partnership Manager and Patent Strategist at Aurora Consulting
* Steve Stupp, Partner at Stupp Associates, LLC
* Dominic Filice, Patent Expert at Parola Analytics, Inc.

For this episode, we break form a bit by front-loading a brief chat with Ashley to help set the stage with some extra up-front context that we hope can be helpful for our broader audience. We discuss the following:

* What is a final rejection?
* Is it common to get one or more rejections from patent offices during prosecution of an application?
* How does AFCP compare with the other post-rejection practices of 1) appealing to the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) and 2) submitting a Request for Continued Examination (RCE) ? When does AFCP make the most sense vs. the other two?
* What is the likelihood of getting a post-rejection allowance using one of three options?

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** Resources **
* Show Notes: https://www.aurorapatents.com/blog/new-podcast-after-final-practice
** Follow Aurora Consulting **
* Home: https://www.aurorapatents.com/
* Twitter: https://twitter.com/AuroraPatents
* LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/aurora-cg/
* Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/aurorapatents/
* Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/aurorapatents/

And as always, thanks for listening!
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Note: The contents of this podcast do not constitute legal advice.
Attributions:
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Chapters

1. Intro (00:00:00)

2. What is a final rejection? (00:01:50)

3. How common are rejections? (00:03:03)

4. Post-rejection options compared (00:05:00)

5. Post-rejection practice success (00:08:15)

6. After Final Practice panel discussion start (00:12:53)

7. Traditional After Final Practice (00:13:28)

8. AFCP 2.0 (00:15:11)

9. AFCP 2.0 process breakdown (00:25:47)

10. Traditional After Final vs AFCP 2.0 (00:27:08)

11. Outro (00:29:16)