by Dennis Crouch
I have been looking at after final practice, and potential changes going forward in how applicant's respond to this important decision point.
The chart above looks at fate of patent applications that received final rejections in January 2024 -- and shows an optimistic picture one-year out. Among the 15,813 applications tracked, nearly half (48%) have issued as patents or at least received a notice of allowance, suggesting that a final rejection, while a significant hurdle, is far from the end of the road for many applications. And, that an allowance may well be on the horizon. A substantial percentage of these cases used the now defunct After Final Consideration Pilot (AFCP 2.0) to transform the rejection into allowance. Moving forward, applicants will likely instead need to file a Request for Continued Examination (RCE) or appeal.