You will receive a Notice of Allowance if, on examination, it appears that you are entitled to a patent. A Notice of Allowance indicates that the patent application has met the requirements of the United States Patent Office successfully and that the claims are allowed by the examiner. The Notice of Allowance is issued if the application is not opposed. This is very exciting and means that your patent has been granted. This is the final step in a long and complex patent application application process.
The information in the Notice of Allowance must be correct. If there are any errors, it needs to be pointed out as soon as possible.
If the patent will be published, a publication and issue fee is required. The fee requirements are listed in the Notice of Allowance.
Once you have paid the issue fee, you will be sent an Issue Notification with the patent number and the anticipated issue date. Any extra patent applications that are based on this patent application (“parent” application) that has been allowed will need to be filed before the parent patent application issues.
Since the three month deadline on this cannot be extended and failing to pay the issue fee results in losing the patent, this document is very crucial and you want to be on the lookout for it.
In some cases the examiner realizes that there was an error in the Notice of Allowance. There are four notices you could receive. One notice is referred to as a Corrected Notice of Allowance. In this case, the examiner realizes that there was an error in the Notice of Allowance that was mailed to the attorney. Another notice is referred to as a Corrected Notice of Allowability. This means there is a need to revise some aspect of the Patent Application to complete the Notice of Allowance process. The Patent Application might need to be revised and submitted again. Another notice is referred to as a Notice of Allowability. The applicant has to satisfy the requirements of the patentability and ensures the prosecution is closed on merit. The formalities must be fulfilled either before or along with the payment of the issue fees. The last type of notice is a Supplemental Notice of Allowability. This permits the applicant to file an Information Disclosure Statement after the Notice of Allowance is received. These are all part of post-allowance. The notices ensure Patent Application and related documents are compliant with the United States Patent Office and do not affect the due date of the Issue Fee Payment. They may, however, result in abandonment if the documents are not in order. The Notices should be checked thoroughly to ensure all the documents are docketed in an appropriate manner.
These final steps are very important and you should make sure you complete the process correctly by using an attorney.
