NEW ZEALAND
October 17, 2016
The three main new Act divisional issues are:
(i) An absolute bar exists for filing a divisional application later than five (5) years from the complete filing date of the originating parent by preventing availability to request any examination of the divisional application, (ii) need to be filed within the initial response period set after issuance of an examination report, and without reliance on any extension of time, otherwise a "substantive response" must be filed on the parent in order to validly file the divisional, and (iii) may result in self-collision with its parent application where claims of the parent and/or divisional contain added subject matter not present in the original priority/provisional filing, and therefore any added subject matter should be kept in separate claims for both parent and divisional applications.