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The USPTO proposes to amend the Rules of Practice in Patent Cases to permit a terminal disclaimer to obviate nonstatutory double patenting based upon a reference application or patent owned by parties to a joint research agreement where the reference application or patent is neither prior art to nor commonly owned with the application or patent in which the disclaimer is filed. The USPTO also proposes to amend its rules of practice to explicitly permit the filing of preemptive terminal disclaimers with enforcement limitations. The USPTO further proposes to codify current practice permitting the preemptive filing of an affidavit or a declaration of attribution or of prior public disclosure to disqualify a disclosure as prior art in an application or patent under reexamination subject to the first-inventor-to-file provisions of the Leahy Smith America Invents Act.