2. Fees effective October 1, 1995.
3. The one year time limit applies to prior provisional U.S. patent applications and to foreign patent applications. There are certain rules which govern claiming priority from foreign patent applications. See Protecting Inventions Internationally. There is no arbitrary time limit for claiming priority from a prior regular U.S. patent application, however there must be co-pendency between the prior U.S. patent application and the new regular patent application in which the priority claim is made. 4. A continuation-in-part application (CIP) is a U.S. Patent Application which includes both new and old subject matter. The old subject matter comes from the parent application to which the CIP application claims priority under 35 U.S.C. Section 120. The CIP application also includes new subject matter not found in the parent application. CIP applications recognize the fact that inventions are dynamic, that they are continually undergoing change and improvement. CIP applications can have multiple effective filing dates and the claims in the application can have different effective filing dates depending upon when a claim was first supported by the technical disclosure of the patent application.
5. This is also true for regular patent applications - but in the case of regular patent applications, an English-language translation must be filed promptly and additional official fees must be paid.
6. For acts of invention in Canada and Mexico, the relevant date under the NAFTA implementing legislation is January 1, 1994.
7. It should be borne in mind that certain countries require that local rules and regulations be complied with before foreign applications can be lawfully filed. Applicants from such countries will want to ensure that they comply with local rules and regulations before they instruct the filing of U.S. patent applications (both provisional applications and regular applications) or other foreign patent applications.
8. If patent applicants can file patent applications claiming priority under the Paris Convention, it is our experience that they often wait close to the end of the one year grace period (measured from their filing date of their home country application) provided by the Paris Convention. If foreign applicants want to take advantage of a provisional patent application, they should probably file the provisional patent application about the same time that they file their home country application or as soon as their national security laws permit such filings.
