The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has instituted its First Action Interview Pilot Program (FAIPP) for patent applicants. While currently a well-kept secret, legal departments seeking to obtain patents for their companies should understand and use the program.
My firm has filed more than 200 requests to participate in the FAIPP. Our lawyers’ experience has been that this free program improves the speed to first action on patent applications, as well as the relevance of early office actions (the examiner’s interim rejections on patentability) and the focus of our responses. This combination accelerates the process of obtaining patents and reduces the number of office actions to allowance of the patent, thus improving the total cost to convincing the USPTO to allow issuance of a patent.
