Restriction Practice

Abstract

The idea that an applicant should not be able to claim more than one “invention” in a single application was well established in the eighteenth century. There were two principal reasons that could be gleaned from the requirement to “divide” an application. “Division” was required because an applicant should pay one fee for each examination of an invention and the more pragmatic reason that if two different inventions were housed in one application and there was only one set of drawing figures with the application, the single set of drawings could not accomodate the Patent Office system of keeping track of two or more differing sets of technology without a second application being filed.