Voluntary divisional applications as per Paris Convention are now formally acknowledged in the Law.
When a unity objection is raised, and non-selected matter is eliminated from the scope, it will no longer be possible to bring back the non-selected matter to the pending application.
Divisional applications can no longer be filed from divisional applications unless the divisional can be carried out according to the MXPTO’s criteria or unless a further division is requested by the MXPTO, in other words, while voluntary divisional applications from a divisional application can be filed, these will be subject to the Examiner’s criteria as to whether this second divisional application was necessary/allowable.
Divisional applications would need to be filed at the latest, two-months after the Notice of Allowance has been issued. This is taken from Article 102 and 117 where the automatic two-month term extension available to, for example, responses and granting fees, is not available for divisional applications.
Under the new law, when the MXPTO issues a unity of invention objection, the MXPTO will only consider the invention mentioned in the first place of the claims as the main invention, and will evaluate the remaining patentability requisites from the main invention.
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