Appeal No. 1998-0212 Page 9
Reissue Application No. 07/837,588
12. However, unexpectedly, on August 21, 1989,
less than two months after the payment of the issue
fee and before any action on the June 13, 1989
Supplemental Amendment, the undersigned received the
late Notice of Patent Issuance in the U.S. patent
application advising that the original patent had
already issued on
August 15, 1989. At this same time, the two U.S.
continuation applications and the divisional
applications were being finalized in my office to
prepare for filing, with the intent of making them
co-pending with and of claiming priority from the
U.S. patent application. (Id., ¶¶ 11-12.)
The examiner’s reply follows:
First, appellant should not correlate the Issue
Fee Receipt to the date of patent issuance.
Although the Issue Fee Receipt should precede the
issue of a patent as the "standard practice", they
are actually not related.
Secondly, the period from appellant's
Supplemental Amendment signature date (06/13/89)
(Application SN 06/908,176 paper #24) to the patent
issued date (08/15/89) was two months, which should
have been enough for appellant to file a
continuation application if appellant had desired to
do so.
Most importantly, as soon as the receiving of
Notice of Allowance (03/13/89, paper #21) appellant
should have prepared for filing a continuation
application. Had appellant done so, the
continuation application would have been filed prior
to the issuance of the patent. (Examiner’s Answer
at 6.)
We agree with the examiner.
Page: Previous 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 Next
Last modified: November 3, 2007