by Dennis Crouch
The USPTO is discontinuing its Accelerated Examination program on July 10, 2025. The program has received fewer than 100 petitions in recent years, compared with 10,000+ Track One prioritized examination requests. The USPTO anticipates further raising the annual limit on Track One requests in 2025. The USPTO also recently terminated the Climate Change Mitigation Pilot Program on January 28, 2025. See Discontinuation of the Accelerated Examination Program for Utility Applications, 90 Fed. Reg. 24324 (June 10, 2025).
The Accelerated Examination program allowed applicants to advance their applications out of turn by filing a petition to make special along with a pre-examination search and examination support document. The program was designed to provide expedited examination for applicants willing to invest significant effort in preparing detailed examination support materials, including prior art searches and claim charts mapping the prior art to each pending claim. However, the program’s popularity plummeted following the introduction of Track One prioritized examination in 2011. Unlike Accelerated Examination, Track One requires only payment of a fee—currently $4,200 for large entities—without the burden of preparing examination support documents or conducting pre-examination searches. (more…)