Legal Definitions - continuing application

A continuing application is a type of patent application filed while the parent application is still pending. It carries on the prosecution of some or all of the original application. There are different types of continuing applications, including:

• Continuation application: filed to pursue additional claims that were not included in the original application
• Continuation-in-part application: filed to pursue new claims that were not included in the original application, but also includes some claims from the original application
• Divisional application: filed when an examiner finds that a disclosure reveals two or more distinct inventions, and the applicant must restrict the original application to claiming one of the inventions. A divisional application can then be filed on any nonelected invention.
• Reissue application: filed to change the scope of a patent that has already been issued, or to correct clerical or technological errors in the issued patent.

For example, if an inventor filed a patent application for a new type of bicycle, but later realized that the application did not include all the claims they wanted to protect, they could file a continuation application to pursue those additional claims.