Responding to an Office Action about your patent

An office action is a letter from your patent examiner that there are reasons why your application isn’t being approved and you may want to adjust the application for resubmission.

The vast majority of patent submissions will get one or more office action letters.
In Advance of having your original patent application written, ask your patent professional about the costs of reviewing and advising on what should be done about the one or more office action letters you could get. And How long does that process take.

When the patent office has one or more problems with your non-provisional patent application there are things to learn about

How long after your application is sent in does it get an examiner review?

Do you have any choice of what area of experience the examiner has in your product category or industry?

Have you agreed with your patent attorney or agent about the additional costs to research and respond when you get office actions?

What are typical reasons for getting flagged by the examiner?

Can your patent professional speak to the examiner to get more information about the problems and any changes that would solve the problems

Learn about some preferred explanations of Office Actions on YouTube?

Researched and written by
Dave Bruce Savage  August 2026
Dave is the founder and facilitator of the Inventor’s Education Forum in Jacksonville FloridaInventorsEducationForum.org