Petition to Make Special: 5 Fast Ways to Skip the Line at the USPTO

The average U.S. utility application waits well over a year just for a first substantive review, and closer to two before it issues. For an inventor who is 70 years old, or fighting a serious illness, or watching a competitor copy the product, that wait is not an abstraction. A petition to make special is the mechanism that moves an application out of the ordinary queue and to the front of the examiner’s docket. Some versions cost thousands of dollars; two of them are free. This guide walks through who qualifies, what changed at the USPTO in 2025, and how to choose the right fast track.

What Is a Petition to Make Special?

A petition to make special is a formal request asking the USPTO to advance an application out of its normal turn for examination. Ordinary applications are examined roughly in the order they are filed, grouped by the examiner’s art unit. When an application is “made special,” the examiner pulls it forward and works it ahead of the queue, which can shave many months, sometimes more than a year, off the wait to a first office action.

The authority sits in the Manual of Patent Examining Procedure, chiefly MPEP 708.02, and in the fee-based prioritized examination rules under 37 CFR 1.102. Not every applicant qualifies for the free routes, and the paid routes carry their own fees and page limits. The practical question is never just “can I go faster,” but “which lane fits my situation, and what does it cost.” The USPTO’s own accelerated examination resource page is the authoritative starting point when you want to confirm current rules.

Below are the five routes practitioners actually use in 2026, starting with the two that are free.

Route 1 & 2: Age and Health (The Free Options)

The two most valuable petitions cost nothing, and they survived the 2025 program changes intact.

1. Age. If at least one named inventor is 65 years of age or older, the application can be made special with no fee and essentially no showing beyond a statement of age. The USPTO provides Form PTO/SB/130 for this purpose. There is no requirement to conduct a pre-examination search, unlike the discontinued Accelerated Examination track.
2. Health. If an inventor’s health is such that they might not be available to assist in prosecution if the case ran its normal course, the application can be made special. This one requires supporting evidence, typically a physician’s certificate or similar medical documentation. Like the age route, it carries no government fee.

These are the routes we recommend first whenever a client qualifies. There is no downside: no extra fee, no search burden, and no cap on how many claims you can pursue. For an older solo inventor, filing the age-based petition at the same time as the application is close to a no-brainer.

What Changed in 2025: Accelerated Examination Ended

Here is the update most older guides miss. The USPTO discontinued its Accelerated Examination program for utility applications, and it stopped accepting petitions under that program filed on or after July 10, 2025. Accelerated Examination was the route that required an applicant to run a pre-examination prior-art search and submit a detailed accelerated examination support document, promising a final disposition within roughly twelve months.

The office concluded that its fee-based Track One prioritized examination had largely replaced it, so it retired the older, more burdensome track through a formal Federal Register notice. If you read a blog post that tells you to prepare an examination support document for a utility case, that advice is now out of date.

Crucially, the age and health petitions to make special are not part of the Accelerated Examination program and were not affected by the discontinuation. They remain fully available. So do Track One and the Patent Prosecution Highway, covered next.

Route 3, 4 & 5: Track One, PPH, and Targeted Pilots

When age and health don’t apply, three fee- or reciprocity-based lanes remain:

• Track One prioritized examination. The workhorse today. You pay a prioritization fee (reduced for small and micro entities), keep claims within limits (generally no more than four independent and thirty total), and the office aims for a final disposition in about twelve months. No search document required. See our Track One prioritized examination guide for the full mechanics.
• Patent Prosecution Highway (PPH). If a corresponding application already received a favorable ruling in a partner patent office, you can leverage that result to fast-track the U.S. case. There is no USPTO fee for the PPH request itself, which makes it attractive for applicants filing internationally.
• Targeted pilot programs. The office periodically runs subject-matter pilots, historically covering areas like cancer immunotherapy and, more recently, climate-related and green technologies. These come and go, so confirm current availability on USPTO.gov before relying on one.

How to File Your Request, Step by Step

For the free age and health routes, the process is refreshingly light. There is no examiner interview to schedule, no support document to draft, and no search to commission. In most cases a single form and a short statement do the job:

1. Confirm eligibility. For age, verify at least one inventor is 65 or older. For health, gather the medical documentation you’ll rely on.
2. Complete the petition. Use USPTO Form PTO/SB/130 (make special) and identify the basis. No fee code is needed for age or health.
3. File it with, or after, the application. Filing at the same time as the nonprovisional application is cleanest, but you can petition later while the case is pending.
4. Respond quickly. Once a case is special, momentum matters. Answer office actions promptly so you don’t surrender the time advantage you paid nothing to gain.

For Track One, the request is filed at the time of the application (or on entry into the U.S. national phase) along with the prioritization fee, and the claim limits must be respected from the start. Miss the claim caps and the request is dismissed.

Common Mistakes and When Speed Actually Helps

Faster is not always better. Prioritized examination compresses your timeline, which means less room to file a well-considered response to an office action and less time to develop a continuation strategy. Speed helps most when a patent unlocks funding, when you need a granted claim to enforce against a copyist, or when an inventor’s age or health makes waiting genuinely risky.

The mistakes we see most often: assuming Accelerated Examination is still available for utility cases (it isn’t), forgetting that Track One claim caps are strict, and filing a bare-bones application just to go fast. Rushing a thin specification to the front of the line only gets you rejected sooner. If you’re still deciding between a placeholder and a full filing, our provisional patent application guide covers the trade-offs.

One more: don’t confuse this filing with a petition to revive an abandoned application. They solve completely different problems. Making a case special advances a live, pending application; revival brings a dead one back after a missed deadline. Filing the wrong paper wastes time you were trying to save.

Finally, remember that going special only accelerates examination on the merits. It does not shorten statutory response windows, guarantee an allowance, or override a substantive rejection. What it buys you is the examiner’s attention, sooner. Whether that head start is worth a compressed schedule depends entirely on why you need the patent, and how soon.

Fast-Track Your Application With PerspireIP

Choosing between a free age or health petition, Track One, and PPH is a judgment call that depends on your inventor, your budget, and your enforcement timeline. PerspireIP’s patent team files these requests routinely and can pair the right fast-track route with a specification strong enough to survive a compressed exam. Contact us to map out the quickest sound path to a granted patent.

Frequently Asked Questions