How to revive an abandoned application?
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How to revive an abandoned application? Video Transcript
What does petition to revive an application mean? You can revive an abandoned application by submitting evidence that you did an unintentional abandonment or an unavoidable abandonment depending on your facts or your scenario. You did not intend to do it and was unavoidable. This is used when your patent accidentally goes abandoned. You generally want to revive it within a few months after it has gone abandoned; otherwise, it becomes a very difficult process and the Patent Office may not agree. As far as extension of time, the Patent Office, when it issues office actions, requires you to respond within three months or you can pay extra fees and extend that up to six months. You can pay those fees at the time of filing the response but you have to be careful when you have an office action that you respond within six months total of the mailing date of the office action. With your response, you want to make sure you pay the extra fees if it has been beyond three months from the mailing date. Those are some ways that you can revive. So there are two concepts we are talking about: one is reviving an abandoned application and you could do it because of an unavoidable or unintentional abandonment; and the second thing we are talking about is if there is an office action that you failed to respond to within three months of mailing, you can pay extra fees up to six months total from the mailing date of the office action and you could pay those fees at the time of filing the response so that you can get the Patent Office to consider your response without letting it go abandoned.