On January 3, 2021, the US Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO) announced an extension of the modified COVID-19 Prioritized Examination Pilot Program. Compliant requests filed on or before March 31, 2022, will be accepted.
We covered this modified Pilot Program in our post three months ago, and we covered the original program in prior posts (here and here). The USPTO’s notice published in September extended the Pilot Program to December 31, 2021, and removed the limit on the number of applications that could receive prioritized examination. The current notice now extends the program for three additional months.
When the COVID-19 Pilot Program commenced, Former USPTO Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director Andrei Iancu noted that “independent inventors and small businesses are often the difference makers when it comes to cutting-edge innovation and the growth of our economy [and]… are also in most need of assistance as we fight this pandemic.” As he explained, “Accelerating examination of COVID-19-related patent applications, without additional fees, will permit such innovators to bring important and possibly life-saving treatments to market more quickly.”
Read more at https://www.natlawreview.com/article/uspto-again-extends-fast-track-program-covid-related-inventions
