I filed a provisional application and did not receive a foreign filing license. Six months have passed and having received no secrecy order, I foreign filed the application. I later filed the nonprovisional application and again did not receive a foreign

The USPTO does not compare the contents of a provisional application with a later-filed nonprovisional application for security review purposes. If applicant obtains a new license on a later-filed application, applicant needs to make a determination of which license controls. That is, if the subject matter of the nonprovisional application does not change the general nature of the invention of the provisional application such that it would have been made available to a defense agency, then the license date of the provisional application would control. In the instance described above, the latter license would control if the documents were not identical because an implied license is under the provisions of 37 CFR 5.15(b). 37 CFR 5.15(b) does not allow for additional subject matter beyond what was originally submitted.