On June 24, 2003, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office announced that Continued Prosecution Applications (CPAs) were being eliminated, effective July 14, 2003.
The announcement can be found here:
http://www.patentsusa.com/20031023_CPA_Eliminated.pdf
The reason given for eliminating CPAs was that CPA practice was largely redundant in view of RCE practiced introduced by the American Inventors Protection Act. CPAs are discussed below in the 1997 post, and RCEs are discussed in the American Inventors Protection Act post. Both were used to continue prosecution after, for example, a Final Rejection was issued by an Examiner. Filing fee calculations were different between RCEs and CPAs, and filing a CPA would eliminate the applicability of certain commonly owned prior art.
