Posts Tagged: "Retroactive Foreign Filing License"

How to Ensure Your Retroactive Foreign Filing License Petition Isn’t Dismissed

As outlined in our article, The Good, the Bad and the Missing: Findings from a Review of the Data on Granted Retroactive Foreign Filing Licenses, Petition.ai’s subscribers’ most searched patent petition type is for retroactive foreign filing licenses (RFFLs). In the article, we highlighted that 71% of applications petitioning the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) for a RFFL eventually are granted. On average, it took 2.3 RFFL petitions over 1.4 years before obtaining the granted petition. We also pointed out 84% of granted RFFL petition decisions could not be found in the Public PAIR’s Image File Wrapper (IFW). Several months after we published the article, and after several communications with the Office of Petitions, these granted decisions were finally published in the IFW. This article examines the most common reasons why the USPTO dismisses RFFL petitions.

The Good, the Bad and the Missing: Findings from a Review of the Data on Granted Retroactive Foreign Filing Licenses

Since launching Petition.ai’s searchable database of publicly available patent petition documents filed with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), the most searched petition type, by far, is for a Retroactive Foreign Filing License (RFFL). Anecdotally, patent practitioners believe it is difficult, if not almost impossible, to obtain a RFFL. However, while the process may take a long time and may require several petitions, our analysis shows requests for RFFLs are often granted, eventually. A future article will examine the most common reasons why RFFL petitions are dismissed. Finally, our research uncovered some troubling issues with the substantial number of the granted petition decisions not available for public review.