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711.04(c) Notifying Applicants of Abandonment - 700 Examination of Applications
711.04(c) Notifying Applicants of Abandonment
The Patent Examining Corps currently mails to the correspondence address of record, a Notice of Abandonment form PTOL-1432 in all applications which become abandoned in the Corps for failure to prosecute. However, in no case will mere failure to receive a notice of abandonment affect the status of an abandoned application.
This procedure should enable applicants to take appropriate and diligent action to reinstate an application inadvertently abandoned for failure to timely reply to an official communication. In most cases, a petition to revive under 37 CFR 1.137 will be the appropriate remedy. It may be that a reply to the Office action was mailed to the Office with a certificate of mailing declaration as a part thereof ( MPEP § 512) but was not received in the Office. In this instance, adequate relief may be available by means of a petition to withdraw the holding of abandonment.
In any instance, if action is not taken promptly after receiving the notice of abandonment, appropriate relief may not be granted. If a lack of diligent action is predicated on the contention that neither the Office action nor the notice of abandonment was received, one may presume that there is a problem with the correspondence address of record. Accordingly, attention is directed to MPEP § 402 and § 601.03 dealing with changes of address. In essence, it is imperative that a paper notifying the Office of a change of address be filed promptly in each application in which the correspondence address is to be changed (except as provided for under Customer Number practice - see MPEP § 403).
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