How to respond to a Final Office Action?
Go Back 
How to respond to a Final Office Action? Video Transcript
In this section, I am going to talk about how you respond to a Final Office Action. Generally, after Final Office Actions, you cannot make any substantive amendments to your claims. You can only change them to be in the form the Patent Office will accept. If they have objected to some claims, you can overcome the objections by incorporating limitations into independent claims so they are now in condition for allowance. So basically you have to do what the Patent Office says if you have objected to claims. Objected to claims means that the Patent Office would allow the patent to grant if you incorporate limitations from dependent claims to the independent ones. Now if all your claims are rejected which means the Patent Office is not going to allow anything, you cannot amend your claims substantively. You can only argue with the Patent Office and try to convince him for the last time why your patent should be granted. You do have right to an examiner interview. So you can interview the examiner and ask them questions and maybe have one call with them to convince the examiner that your case should be allowed. Absent that, you can file an RCE request for continued examination to keep the case alive, you could file a continuation application and pursue it in a separate application, you could file a continuation part application if you are going to add new things to that invention and then pursue the invention in that continuation part application. But do not be afraid to get a Final Office Action. There are limited things you can do. You may only have to put your claims in better condition for allowance or you could take the non-finality away by filing an RCE and paying money to the Patent Office.