Data / Federal rules / 2025-12644
2025 Increase of the Annual Limit on Accepted Requests for Prioritized Examination
The Patent and Trademark Office published this final rule in the Federal Register on July 8, 2025. It took effect on July 8, 2025.
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What the agency says
The Leahy-Smith America Invents Act (AIA) includes provisions for prioritized examination of patent applications. Those provisions have been implemented by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) in previous rulemakings. The AIA provides that the USPTO may not accept more than 10,000 requests for prioritization in any fiscal year (October 1 to September 30) until regulations setting another limit are prescribed. In 2019 and 2021, the USPTO published interim rules that expanded the limit on the number of requests to 12,000 and 15,000, respectively. The current final rule further expands the availability of prioritized examination by increasing the limit on the number of prioritized examination requests that may be accepted in a fiscal year to 20,000.
Key facts
- Document number
- 2025-12644
- Type
- Final rule
- Action
- Final rule
- Agency
- Commerce Department; Patent and Trademark Office
- Published
- July 8, 2025
- Takes effect
- July 8, 2025
- Dates
- Effective Date: July 8, 2025.
- Docket
- Docket No.: PTO-P-2025-0009
- Regulation ID (RIN)
- 0651-AD86
- Code of Federal Regulations
- 37 CFR 1
- Topics
- Administrative practice and procedure; Biologics; Courts; Freedom of information; Inventions and patents; Reporting and recordkeeping requirements; Small businesses
- Pages
- 4
Other documents from the Patent and Trademark Office
Everything from the Patent and Trademark Office · Rules on administrative practice and procedure · Rules on biologics · Rules on courts · Published in July 2025
Read from the Federal Register API, last updated 2026-10-24. The document on federalregister.gov is the official record; dates and dockets can change through later corrections. Free to reuse with credit to SpecStream under CC BY 4.0.