"Continuation" could mean either a family of patent including continuation, divisional, and ᴄɪᴘ, or just "continuation". We need clarification on how questions related to "continuation" should be tagged.
1 Answer
In most cases, I would say we should look at the most common use of the tag, clarify it, and make a synonym.
We've currently got three tags that sound like they handle what you're talking about.
- divisional
- continuation-in-part (and its used-to-be duplicate cip, but I've created a synonym for that)
- continuation
It would be nice to clarify what continuation is for via a rename and synonym. I'm open to suggestions of what a more descriptive name might be.
As for choosing which tag to use, I think the presence of these makes it a simpler choice. continuation should be used for questions about continuations. Not continuations in part, not divisionals, just continuations.
There was one question incorrectly tagged with continuation instead of divisional, and I've fixed that.
Beyond that, though, I think the best action moving forward will be to add tag wikis to each of these to clarify to new (and experienced) users what should be used when.
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1I see a possible issue. A US "continuation" is equivalent to a "divisional" in the rest of the world. A US divisional is just one narrow subspecies of the rest-of-world divisional. Although this site is primarily focused on the US patent system, it will inevitably cover questions from other jurisdictions. It might be confusing if divisional only covered US divisionals, since a question about European divisionals should seemingly have the divisional tag too. But it also seems that US continuations and non-US divisionals should be together, since they are basically the same thing.– MacaMar 11, 2016 at 12:43
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Which is to say, I don't know the answer! I'm just bringing problems without bringing solutions really.– MacaMar 11, 2016 at 12:44
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In the U.S. stating that a continuing application is a "divisional" conveys a property that can avoid a future double patenting rejection. It really is form over substance. To get tis benefit it must be designated a divisional. This might possibly give a unique need for the term in the U.S.– George White ModFeb 6, 2018 at 21:54