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<p class="MsoNormal">An examiner issued a final office action with a new grounds of rejection of a previously allowable claim. The reference used for the rejection
<u>was</u> listed in an IDS submitted with a fee.<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">MPEP 706.07(a) would seem to permit this. “Furthermore, a second or any subsequent action on the merits in any application will not be made final if it includes a rejection on newly cited art
<b>other than</b> information submitted in an information disclosure statement filed under 37 CFR 1.97(c) with the fee set forth in 37 CFR 1.17(p).”<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">However, the examiner was well aware of this reference previously because it was considered in depth during the prosecution of the parent application. MPEP 609.02(II)(A)(2) states: “The examiner will consider information which has been
considered by the Office in a parent application…. A listing of the information need not be resubmitted in the continuing application…”<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">So, I did not need to list this reference in the IDS. (I think it was included because a different foreign jurisdiction used it recently.) But I did.
<b>Does the fact it was listed in an IDS (with a fee) even though it wasn’t new to the record make finality proper?<o:p></o:p></b></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">Thank you,<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal">-Ben<o:p></o:p></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p> </o:p></p>
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