The USPTO recently announced that the Accelerated Examination program will be discontinued as of July 10, 2025. Given that the program has had limited use over the past decade, with fewer than 100 Accelerated Examination requests being filed yearly since 2014, this will have limited impact on the current application backlog, but Track One Examination remains a viable option to expedite examination of US patent applications.
In an effort to reduce examination time for some patent applications, the USPTO implemented Accelerated Examination in 2006. However, use of the program has been limited in the past 10 years. The disinterest may be due to the popularity of Track One examination, which has been available since 2011, as well as some of the onerous procedural requirements involved with Accelerated Examination. To qualify for Accelerated Examination, an applicant must submit an Accelerated Examination support document with multiple requirements and perform a pre-examination search. Significantly, the examination support document requires that the applicant identify references from the pre-examination search and identify all the limitations in the claims that are disclosed by the references, specifying where the limitation is disclosed in the cited reference. Many applicants likely were hesitant to pursue Accelerated Examination due to risks such as file wrapper estoppel that could arise.
Track One has a number of advantages and remains available. Track One generally requires only payment of a fee and a limit on the number of claims. Furthermore, in contrast to Accelerated Examination, Track One provides statutory deadlines by which the USPTO must act to advance the application to final office action or allowance. Specifically, the America Invents Act, which created the Track One program, requires final disposition within 12 months of Track One status being granted. The USPTO currently accepts 15,000 Track One applications per year but is anticipated to increase the limit to 20,000 applications per year.
The USPTO will stop accepting Accelerated Examination requests on July 10, 2025. While Accelerated Examination will be discontinued for utility patents, Accelerated Examination will still be available for design patent applications.
We give our thanks to summer associate Harry Kim, not yet admitted to the bar, for his assistance with this client alert.