By Donald Zuhn —

With day one of the latest
federal government shutdown nearly at an end, and with Washington bracing for a
prolonged government shutdown, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office issued a notice
to applicants and practitioners regarding the status of Office operations for the next few weeks.  The Office indicated it would remain open and
would be "using prior year reserve fee collections to operate as usual for
approximately four weeks."  The
Office also indicated that it would continue to assess its fee collections as compared
to its operating requirements in order to determine how long it will be able to
operate in this capacity during the shutdown, adding that it would provide an
update as more definitive information becomes available.

If the shutdown continues
past the time the Office exhausts its reserve funds, the Office noted that it
"would shut down at that time, although a very small staff would continue
to work to accept new applications and maintain IT infrastructure, among other
functions."  The notice directs
applicants and practitioners to the agency's plan
for "an orderly shutdown," which indicates that after its reserve
funds are exhausted:

[E]xcepted employees [at the USPTO] will
ensure the functionality of processes and systems minimally necessary for the
preservation of patent rights, to allow compliance with statutory provisions
that cannot be waived, and avoid disclosures of information that would be
detrimental to the national security.  Additionally,
the excepted employees will ensure the functionality of processes and systems
minimally necessary to preserve trademark rights.  Preventing the public from accessing the
USPTO's electronic filing and payments systems may result in the complete or
partial loss of intellectual property.  Therefore,
in order to prevent the loss of valuable intellectual property, these systems
should remain open during any closure of the USPTO.

The plan provides a list of
106 of the Office's 11,789 employees who are excepted.

In addition to the above,
the Office noted
that the 18th Annual Independent Inventors conference, originally scheduled for
October 11-12, has been cancelled.  The
Office hopes to reschedule the conference after the government resumes full
operation.  The Office also noted that requests
for paper files have been temporarily suspended because those files are housed in
a federal facility which is owned and operated by the General Services
Administration (GSA), and which is closed during the shutdown.

According to Wikipedia,
the government shutdown that began earlier today is only the latest in a
series of such shutdowns, which includes eight full government shutdowns lasting
between one and three days apiece during the Reagan administration, a four day
shutdown during the first Bush administration, and two full shutdowns lasting
five and 21 days during the Clinton administration — the 21-day shutdown being the longest of any
government shutdown.