When should a restriction requirement not be made according to MPEP 806.03?
According to MPEP 806.03, a restriction requirement should not be made when:
“Where the claims of an application define the same essential characteristics of a single disclosed embodiment of an invention, restriction therebetween should never be required.”
This means that if multiple claims in a patent application are describing the core features of a single embodiment of an invention, the patent examiner should not require the applicant to separate these claims into different applications. The rationale is that these claims are not distinct inventions, but rather different ways of describing the same invention.
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