Once the patent has been published it will be examined by the examiner at Patent Office (like USPTO or others) before it can be granted. Among other things, examiners conduct prior art searching to locate relevant references that can challenge patentability of the application. Often, examiners’ may send non final rejection (NFR) to the applicants by citing prior arts to support the rejection.

Signicent can help prepare a response to the office action (OA) by understanding why the examiner has rejected the claims. There are two major ways to respond:

1. Amend and make necessary changes to the claims, description, and drawings of the application that hopefully will be accepted by the examiner. Amendment may result in narrowing down of the scope of patent.

2. Argue or justify why examiner may have misinterpreted the prior art or may have overlooked certain portions of prior art or patent application. The argument need to polite yet convincing so that examiner may reconsider previous rejection and allow the claims with minimal or no changes.