1125 Express Abandonment to Avoid Publication [R-01.2024]
37 CFR 1.138 Express abandonment
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- (c) An applicant seeking to abandon an application to avoid publication of the application (37 CFR 1.211(a)(1)) must submit a declaration of express abandonment by way of a petition under this paragraph including the fee set forth in § 1.17(h) in sufficient time to permit the appropriate officials to recognize the abandonment and remove the application from the publication process. Applicants should expect that the petition will not be granted and the application will be published in regular course unless such declaration of express abandonment and petition are received by the appropriate officials more than four weeks prior to the projected date of publication.
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Applicants seeking to abandon an application to avoid publication of the application are urged to do so by filing a petition under 37 CFR 1.138(c) and submitting a declaration of express abandonment and the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(h) in sufficient time to permit the appropriate officials (Office of Data Management – Patent Publication Branch) to recognize the abandonment and remove the application from the publication process. Applicants may use form PTO/AIA/24A for applications filed on or after September 16, 2012 or form PTO/SB/24A for applications filed before September 16, 2012 for filing a petition for express abandonment to avoid publication under 37 CFR 1.138(c).(see MPEP § 1135) and file the petition electronically using the USPTO patent electronic filing system, or mail the petition to Mail Stop Express Abandonment, or transmit the petition via facsimile to the Office at (571) 273 8300 (see MPEP § 1730). Filing the petition using the USPTO patent electronic filing system will increase the chances of such petition being received by the appropriate officials in sufficient time to avoid publication of an application.
Any applicant seeking to abandon the application for the purpose of avoiding publication must take appropriate action well prior to the projected publication date. If the application is not recognized as abandoned at least four weeks prior to the projected publication date, the Office will not be able to avoid publication of the application. This does not imply that a request to expressly abandon an application to avoid publication filed prior to this four-week time frame will ensure that the Office will be able to remove an application from publication. The Office simply cannot ensure that it can remove an application from publication or avoid publication of application information any time after the publication process for the application is initiated (about 4 months prior to the projected publication date).
The petition for express abandonment to avoid publication will be granted when it is recognized in sufficient time to avoid publication and will be denied when it is not recognized in sufficient time to avoid publication of the application. This will avert the situation in which an applicant files a letter of express abandonment to avoid publication, the letter of express abandonment is not recognized in sufficient time to avoid publication, upon publication the applicant wishes to rescind the letter of express abandonment, and the Office cannot revive the application (once the letter of express abandonment is recognized) because the application was expressly and intentionally abandoned by the applicant.
