Potential harms to filing an app withOUT fees, then refiling with fees?

[EvilLost]

I understand that in order to make a claim of priority to the earlier application, the filing fee of the earlier application must be paid. But what if I don't care about a priority claim?


Is there any other potential harm?

Example:
File a "first filing" application on Monday without paying fees. Client wants to make a last minute new matter change. Re-file the application, with the new matter, on Wed.

If the original Monday filing goes abandoned, nothing happens...right? Since the original filing was never public, it shouldn't affect anything else?

[Toot Aps Esroh]

Outside of the PTO screwing up and accidentally publishing #1 at 18 mos, despite it going ABD at the end of the NTFMP+5 mos extension period, I don't see the harm.

What you describe is not a lot different than what some pharma filers do in filing an early prov, then letting it go ABD if the project hasn't progressed enough, then filing a new prov around the 1 year mark (giving up the potential to claim priority to that year-ago filing).

Edit: Guess you could also file an explicit abandonment paper in #1 as soon as you file 1-prime.

[RolandS]

May I remind you of paragraph 4 of Art. 4 C of the Paris Convention?

A subsequent application concerning the same subject as a previous first application within the meaning of paragraph (2), above, filed in the same country of the Union shall be considered as the first application, of which the filing date shall be the starting point of the period of priority, if, at the time of filing the subsequent application, the said previous application has been withdrawn, abandoned, or refused, without having been laid open to public inspection and without leaving any rights outstanding, and if it has not yet served as a basis for claiming a right of priority. The previous application may not thereafter serve as a basis for claiming a right of priority.

In order to establish a right for claiming priority to a subsequent application, which your re-filed application would be, your first-filed application would have to be "withdrawn, abandoned, or refused, without having been laid open to public inspection and without leaving any rights outstanding" "at the time of filing the subsequent application".

So if you intend to re-file the application before the NTFMP+5 mos extension period, you have to file an explicit abandonment before you re-file it. I don't know if you would have to wait until you receive a notice that the first-filed application has been withdrawn or if it is sufficient that the date of filing the explicit abandonment lies before the re-filing date.

Most of the times there would be no problem in just letting the first-filed application go abandoned by itself as usually noone will ever know, but "the devil is a little oak-horn" 
Just when the value of your invention is sky-rocketing some klerk will remember having processed your first-filed application and inform someone who you don't want to know that or something similarly unthinkable will happen and there goes your wealth...

[Toot Aps Esroh]

May I remind you of paragraph 4 of Art. 4 C of the Paris Convention?

Thank you Roland; always good to keep in mind.  Besides the chance you mention, any jurisdiction where litigants have the ability in discovery to make document requests could also bring it to light.