by Dennis Crouch
The USPTO is discontinuing its Accelerated Examination program on July 10, 2025. The program has received fewer than 100 petitions in recent years, compared with 10,000+ Track One prioritized examination requests. The USPTO anticipates further raising the annual limit on Track One requests in 2025. The USPTO also recently terminated the Climate Change Mitigation Pilot Program on January 28, 2025. See Discontinuation of the Accelerated Examination Program for Utility Applications, 90 Fed. Reg. 24324 (June 10, 2025).
The Accelerated Examination program allowed applicants to advance their applications out of turn by filing a petition to make special along with a pre-examination search and examination support document. The program was designed to provide expedited examination for applicants willing to invest significant effort in preparing detailed examination support materials, including prior art searches and claim charts mapping the prior art to each pending claim. However, the program’s popularity plummeted following the introduction of Track One prioritized examination in 2011. Unlike Accelerated Examination, Track One requires only payment of a fee—currently $4,200 for large entities—without the burden of preparing examination support documents or conducting pre-examination searches.
The rule change also clarifies an important post-AIA distinction regarding petitions to make special based on age or health. The revised 37 C.F.R. § 1.102(c) now specifies that such fee-free petitions must be based on “the inventor’s or a joint inventor’s age or health” rather than the applicant’s age or health. This change reflects that under the AIA, the terms “inventor” and “applicant” are no longer synonymous, as applicants may be entities or individuals other than the actual inventors.
Additionally, the USPTO is eliminating the fee-free petition grounds for inventions that “materially enhance the quality of the environment,” “contribute to the development or conservation of energy resources,” or “contribute to countering terrorism.”
Design Patent Issues: While the USPTO discontinued Accelerated Examination for utility applications, the agency took the opposite approach with design patent expedited examination, suspending the popular “rocket docket” program under 37 C.F.R. § 1.155 effective April 17, 2025. See Suspension of Expedited Examination of Design Patent Applications (April 14, 2025). The rocket docket program, which provided expedited processing through the entire course of prosecution for design applications meeting specific requirements and paying the fee under 37 C.F.R. § 1.17(k), was experiencing “explosive” growth. (Isn’t that what rockets do?) The USPTO determined that this surge was negatively impacting pendency for non-rocket design applications.
The USPTO was losing money on these because many of the rocket docket requests came from those with micro entity status. But, according to the USPTO many of these micro entity certifications were “erroneous,” filed by applicants who had been named on more than four previously filed applications or patents and therefore did not qualify for micro entity status.
But, because it eliminated the rocket docket, the USPTO is keeping Accelerated Examination for design patents only. I.e., design patent applicants will continue to have access to the Accelerated Examination program as well as fee-free petitions to make special based on an inventor’s age or health.
