The USPTO website is now showing a "Final Rejectio

The USPTO website is now showing a "Final Rejection" status for the USA patent application.

It could be that Mr Wang and the company did not submit the payment to keep the time extension going or possibly the examiner in fact disagreed with the response to the non-final rejection from earlier. The response from the company is documented on the USPTO website and it argues that the non-final rejection is improper because of many detailed reasons regarding patent law and technicalities. Now with the final rejection the company must respond within a certain amount of time to appeal it or else just abandon the application. They still have the Euro patent for the device but not having the USA patent is another negative for this company, however it does not look like any other company is producing this kind of device so its not like there is any competition out there yet for such a device. Having the USA patent would be a nice competitive advantage but not having it really does not make any difference if the company is not actively producing this product and selling it. Perhaps they plan to re-design the device and maybe Mr Wang will attempt to patent a different kind of device, who knows. Its all just guesswork at this point because the company has been in the dark for an entire year so no one knows what is going on, if anything. Having a USA patent for a device which the company is not even producing does not make much sense anyway. I did find the excerpt below about further action the company can take on the final rejection action.

Final / non-final rejection
A rejection may be non-final or final. A final rejection ends a cycle of examination. When he gets a final rejection the applicant can:

1. abandon the application,

2. request a face-to-face or telephonic interview with the examiner,

3. make a request for continued examination (RCE),

4. file a continuation application,

5. file a continuation in part application,

6. appeal.