On September 30, 2024, the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO) notified the public that it would not renew the After-Final Consideration Pilot Program 2.0 (AFCP 2.0). Instead, the USPTO extended the program to December 14, 2024, after which the program will be terminated.
AFCP 2.0 allowed patent applicants to seek further review of a final rejection if the applicant made at least one non-broadening amendment to an independent claim. The program gave examiners a short amount of time to update their search in view of the amendments, and to discuss the results of the updated search with applicants via an examiner-initiated interview. As a result, applicants were sometimes able to avoid the need for an RCE or to consider newly found art, applying to the amendments submitted with the AFCP 2.0 request, when filing an RCE. The program received over 60,000 requests per year over the past eight years. The USPTO cited its costs associated with the program, and applicants' unwillingness to start paying a fee for the program, in its decision to terminate it.
We encourage you to consider whether any final rejections currently pending or issued between now and early December could benefit from this program and to take advantage of it while it is still available. After December 15, 2024, applicants' options after a final rejection will return to being limited to requesting reconsideration, filing an RCE, appealing, or abandoning the application.
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