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What are the pros and cons of filing a continuing application in response to a Final Office Action?

9/5/2017

 
+If you are lucky, you may be assigned a different, more reasonable Examiner.

+Gives you two more chances to persuade the Examiner.

+With a continuation-in-part application, you can add new matter to the spec in the subsequent filed application (but note that any claims involving any new matter will be given an effective date of the second application's filing date, as opposed to the first application's filing date).

-You may be assigned the exact same stubborn/recalcitrant Examiner that rejected your first patent application.

-Because this is a new application, it gets Examined in the order it was filed (unless expedited).  Even when expedited, you will likely get your First Office Action on the second patent application later than had you filed an RCE on the first patent application. 

-New set of Filing Fees:  Have to file Filing Fee ($75), Search Fee ($330), Examination Fee ($380).

-You are cutting into your own patent term.  A term of the patent normally lasts twenty years from the date of filing, but in a continuing application, it lasts twenty years from the date of the earliest prior application.

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