In order to accelerate the examination process, it is necessary to petition the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO) to make a patent application special. Any application for which acceleration is requested must have been filed electronically along with the petition. This means that, if the petition is allowed, the patent application will be picked up and examined out of turn before other non-special applications. The goal of this process is to reach allowance of the application within one year (it will become a patent once the fee is paid).

Since August, 2006, the patent application to be accelerated must be accompanied with a search report, including both U.S. patent and foreign patent reference sources and non-patent literature, and an accelerated examination support document that, among other things, spells out for the USPTO examiner what the references contain and how they apply to the claims. The only exceptions are for advanced age or poor health of the applicant or if the patent application is part of the Patent Prosecution Highway (PPH).