By Donald Zuhn —

In an e-Commerce e-Alert distributed on Friday, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office announced that it was seeking up to 1,000 registered practitioners to help with a pilot test of the Office’s new online Continuing Education for Practitioners (CEP) system.  According to the Office’s call for volunteers, the goal of the CEP system is "to increase efficiency, reduce pendency, and improve quality in the patent process."

The CEP system would achieve this goal by presenting "brief educational materials" concerning, for example, recent USPTO rule changes or revised patent examination guidelines, and then prompting practitioners to respond to "one or more verification questions."  Because practitioners would have ready access to the educational materials while responding to the verification questions, the purpose of the questions would be to verify that the practitioner reviewed the educational materials, rather than to test the practitioner’s knowledge or skills.

Under the CEP system, practitioners would be required to complete one CEP program per year, wherein a program consists of reviewing the education materials and responding to the verification questions.  According to the Patent Office, each program will require about one hour to complete.

To ensure compliance, the CEP system would automatically notify practitioners of the training requirements, send appropriate reminder notices, and track completion of CEP programs.  For practitioners who timely comply with the CEP requirements, no fees will be assessed; fees will be assessed, however, for failure to timely comply with the requirements.

Pilot participants will only be required to complete one program (although additional programs will be available for review).  In addition, the Office stated that participation in the pilot will count towards a participant’s first year CEP requirement "at such time as the USPTO makes CEP a requirement."  Registered practitioners interested in participating in the CEP pilot should send an e-mail, including your name, registration number, telephone number, and e-mail address, to OEDonline@uspto.gov, or call Bill Griffin of the Office of Enrollment and Discipline at 571-272-4097.