Update to Access to Relevant Prior Art Initiative

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Update to Access to Relevant Prior Art Initiative

As of September 30, Art Unit 2131 will be dissolved and thus will no longer be participating in the Access to Relevant Prior Art (RPA) Initiative. Art Unit 2133 will be added to the program and will accept qualifying applications on October 1.

The RPA Initiative is an effort underway to increase patent examination quality and efficiency through the development of an automated tool for USPTO examiners, which, in its first phase, imports relevant prior art into pending U.S. patent applications from their immediate parent application as early as possible.

An applicant whose application is included in the RPA initiative receives a Notice of Imported Citations informing them of their application’s inclusion and listing the citations from the immediate parent application that have been imported into the application.

More information is available on the Access to Relevant Prior Art webpage of the USPTO website. If you have any questions, please contact PriorArtAccess@uspto.gov.

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