Video Transcript

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Hey there, Gary Schuster with Innovation Cafe. Really quickly talking with you about how to understand what’s called an office action when you’re trying to get a patent.

The way the patent office communicates with you is by sending you a written office action. When you first submit a patent application, you get a non-final office action, and then you get — in possibly the biggest misnomer of all time — a “final” office action. Usually those first two are rejections. But you file something called a request for continued examination and get to start over with a non-final office action.

It is not uncommon for high-value patents, especially complicated ones, to have five, six, even seven office actions prior to allowance. So when you go in to file for your patent, be aware that you might have to be paying lawyers’ fees or using your own time to respond to many office actions before you finally get your patent. But they’re still worth getting — they’re awesome. Keep inventing, stay awesome, catch you next time!