Legal Definitions - hiatus

In patent law, a hiatus refers to a break in the continuous chain of patent applications. Specifically, it is a period of time that elapses between when a "parent" patent application is no longer active (either because it was abandoned or because it matured into an issued patent) and when a subsequent "continuing" application, intended to claim the benefit of the parent's filing date, is filed.

When a hiatus occurs, the later-filed continuing application loses its right to claim the earlier filing date of the parent application. This means the continuing application will be treated as if it were filed on its actual filing date, potentially exposing the invention to prior art that emerged during the gap.

• Example 1 (Abandonment Scenario):

  An inventor, Ms. Chen, files a patent application for a new type of solar panel (the parent application). During the examination process, she misses a deadline to respond to an examiner's office action, and her application is officially deemed "abandoned" by the patent office. Six months later, realizing her error, she files an identical new application for the same solar panel invention (the continuing application).

  How it illustrates the term: The six-month period between the abandonment of Ms. Chen's first application and the filing of her second application constitutes a hiatus. Because of this gap, her second application cannot claim the original, earlier filing date of the first application. If new solar panel technology was publicly disclosed during that six-month gap, it could now be used against her second application as prior art.

• Example 2 (Issuance Scenario):

  A pharmaceutical company, PharmaCorp, successfully obtains a patent for a new drug compound (the parent application). They had intended to file a "continuation-in-part" application to cover additional formulations of the drug, but due to internal delays, they don't file this new application until three weeks after the original patent has already officially issued.

  How it illustrates the term: The three-week period between the issuance of PharmaCorp's original patent and the filing of their intended continuing application creates a hiatus. This means the new application for additional formulations cannot claim the benefit of the original patent's much earlier filing date. Any public disclosures or competing inventions that occurred before the new application's filing date, but after the original patent's filing date, could now potentially invalidate or limit the scope of the new application.

• Example 3 (Strategic Delay Gone Wrong):

  Mr. Davies files a patent application for a novel software algorithm (the parent application). He decides to temporarily abandon the application to refine some aspects of the invention and save on immediate prosecution costs, with the intention of filing a new, improved application later. However, he gets sidetracked with other projects and doesn't file the new, continuing application until four months after the original application was officially abandoned.

  How it illustrates the term: The four-month interval between the abandonment of Mr. Davies's initial application and the filing of his subsequent application is a hiatus. As a result, his second application cannot benefit from the filing date of the first application. If a competitor published a similar algorithm during those four months, Mr. Davies's later application would be vulnerable to that publication as prior art, potentially preventing him from securing a patent for his invention.