Continuation Drafter
Tier E: adjacent practice areas
4 authorities. Each is quoted from its primary source and checked against a cached copy.
The shield only covers a divisional, and only if you filed it
Section 121 bars using a patent from a restricted application as a double-patenting reference against a divisional filed before that patent issued, but the protection reaches only divisionals filed in response to an Office restriction requirement, and eight named situations take you outside it.
The parent's file history follows the claim, not the family
The Federal Circuit vacated claim constructions that had imported limitations into a continuation from the prosecution of two earlier family members, holding that a related patent's prosecution history is relevant only where the claims share a limitation in common, and that sharing subject matter is not enough.
A covenant on the parents is not a licence to the children
In a nonprecedential decision the Federal Circuit affirmed that a unilateral covenant not to sue on two parent patents created no implied license to their continuations, distinguishing the implied-license cases on the ground that all of them involved bilateral covenants.
Two drawings are two embodiments, not a range
In a nonprecedential decision the Federal Circuit affirmed that a utility application depicting six-by-six and six-by-four arrays did not describe a later-claimed six-by-five design, so the design application lost the utility filing date and was anticipated by that same utility application.