PRIOR-RIGHT STATUS OF REJECTED APPLICATIONS EXINGUISHED

Up to now, a rejected or abandoned application was recognized as prior art with respect to a later similar filing, on the basis of which that competing later application could be rejected. However, third parties had no way of knowing of the existence of such rejected or abandoned applications because they were never laid open to the public, and as a result it sometimes happened that money would be spent on duplicate designs that would later be rejected. This situation also had the undesirable effect of creating a so-called rejection chain reaction, in which the rejection of the later application then went on to serve as the prior-art basis for rejecting a yet later third application which bore no resemblance to the first application.
Hereafter, however, abandoned applications or applications which have been examined or tried and found to be ones that should be rejected will no longer be considered prior art, so later similar applications will not be rejected on those grounds. Therefore, once the revisions go into effect it will no longer be possible as in the past to automatically revoke registration of others’ later applications on the basis of one’s own rejected applications.