MPEP Section 707.02, Applications Up for Third Action and 5-Year Applications

Executive summary:

This document contains Section 707.02 ("Applications Up for Third Action and 5-Year Applications") of the Manual of Patent Examining Procedure (the "M.P.E.P."), Eighth Edition, Eighth Revision (July 2010). This page was last updated in January 2011. You may return to the section index to find a particular section. Alternatively, you may search the MPEP using the search box that appears on the left side of every page of BitLaw--you may restrict your search to the MPEP on the search results page.

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707.02 Applications Up for Third Action and 5-Year Applications [R-2]

The supervisory patent examiners should impress their assistants with the fact that the shortest path to the final disposition of an application is by finding the best references on the first search and carefully applying them.

The supervisory patent examiners are expected to personally check on the pendency of every application which is up for the third or subsequent *>Office< action with a view to finally concluding its prosecution.

Any application that has been pending five years should be carefully studied by the supervisory patent examiner and every effort >should be< made to terminate its prosecution. In order to accomplish this result, the application is to be considered "special" by the examiner.