¶ 8.21    To Establish Burden AND Requirement for Election and Means for Traversal for all Restrictions, other than an Election of Species

Restriction for examination purposes as indicated is proper because all the inventions listed in this action are independent or distinct for the reasons given above and there would be a serious search and/or examination burden if restriction were not required because one or more of the following reasons apply:

[1].

Applicant is advised that the reply to this requirement to be complete must include (i) an election of a invention to be examined even though the requirement may be traversed (37 CFR 1.143 ) and (ii) identification of the claims encompassing the elected invention.

The election of an invention may be made with or without traverse. To reserve a right to petition, the election must be made with traverse. If the reply does not distinctly and specifically point out supposed errors in the restriction requirement, the election shall be treated as an election without traverse. Traversal must be presented at the time of election in order to be considered timely. Failure to timely traverse the requirement will result in the loss of right to petition under 37 CFR 1.144. If claims are added after the election, applicant must indicate which of these claims are readable upon the elected invention.

Should applicant traverse on the ground that the inventions are not patentably distinct, applicant should submit evidence or identify such evidence now of record showing the inventions to be obvious variants or clearly admit on the record that this is the case. In either instance, if the examiner finds one of the inventions unpatentable over the prior art, the evidence or admission may be used in a rejection under 35 U.S.C. 103  or pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. 103(a)  of the other invention.

Examiner Note:

1. THIS FORM PARAGRAPH MUST BE ADDED TO ALL RESTRICTION REQUIREMENTS other than those containing only election of species, with or without an action on the merits. This form paragraph only needs to be used once, after all restriction requirements are set out.

2. In bracket 1 insert the applicable reason(s) why there is a search and/or examination burden:

--the inventions have acquired a separate status in the art in view of their different classification

--the inventions have acquired a separate status in the art due to their recognized divergent subject matter

--the inventions require a different field of search (e.g., searching different classes/subclasses or electronic resources, or employing different search strategies or search queries).