Under what circumstance does a reissue application lead to the automatic surrender of the original patent?

When a reissue application is filed for a patent, the original patent is automatically surrendered upon the issuance of the reissue patent. This process is rooted in patent law, which allows a patentee to correct defects in the original patent, such as error in claiming the invention or to broaden the scope of claims, but in doing so, they relinquish their rights to the original patent.

This automatic surrender occurs to prevent the patentee from holding rights to both the original and the reissued patent simultaneously, which could create ambiguity over the rights granted and could undermine the clarity of patent ownership. Thus, once the reissue patent is granted and issued, it effectively becomes the sole patent enforcing the inventor’s rights, leading to the forfeiture of the original patent.

In contrast, other stages of the application process, such as the filing of the application, the mailing of a final rejection, or when an application is deemed abandoned, do not trigger the automatic surrender of the original patent. These events do not culminate in the granting of the reissue patent, and therefore, the original rights remain intact until the new patent is officially issued.