Patent Law Weblog
Category: Patent Office Rules & Procedures
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By Donald Zuhn –- After reflecting upon the events of the past twelve months, Patent Docs presents its 15th annual list of top patent stories. For 2021, we identified nine stories that were covered on Patent Docs last year that we believe had (or are likely to have) a significant impact on patent practitioners and…
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By Donald Zuhn –- After reflecting upon the events of the past twelve months, Patent Docs presents its 15th annual list of top patent stories. For 2021, we identified nine stories that were covered on Patent Docs last year that we believe had (or are likely to have) a significant impact on patent practitioners and…
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By Donald Zuhn –- After reflecting upon the events of the past twelve months, Patent Docs presents its 15th annual list of top patent stories. For 2021, we identified nine stories that were covered on Patent Docs last year that we believe had (or are likely to have) a significant impact on patent practitioners and…
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By Michael Borella — On January 6, 2022, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office announced a new program with the goal of increasing examiner efficiency. The Deferred Subject Matter Eligibility Response (DSMER) Pilot Program will launch on February 1, 2022 and end on July 30, 2022, unless extended.[1] The Program allows applicants to, in certain…
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By Donald Zuhn — USPTO Proposes Electronic Issuance of Patents In a notice of proposed rulemaking published last month in the Federal Register (86 Fed. Reg. 71209), the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office is proposing to issue patents electronically through its patent document viewing systems (i.e., Patent Center and Patent Application Image Retrieval (PAIR)). As…
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By Donald Zuhn — USPTO Delays Fee for Failure to File Applications in DOCX Format In a notice published in the Federal Register earlier today (86 Fed. Reg. 66192), the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office announced that it was delaying the effective date for assessment of the fee for filing patent applications that are not…
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By Kevin E. Noonan — Lest we forget, there are two other interferences proceeding before the Patent Trial and Appeal Board, one of which (Interference No. 106,127) names ToolGen as Senior Party and as Junior Party the University of California/Berkeley, the University of Vienna, and Emmanuelle Charpentier (collectively, "CVC"). In March, the PTAB granted leave…
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By Donald Zuhn — This afternoon, President Biden signed S. 475, the "Juneteenth National Independence Day Act," into law. The Act designates Juneteenth National Independence Day as a Federal holiday. In a memorandum issued by the U.S. Office of Personal Management shortly after the signing, the OPM noted that when a Federal holiday falls on…
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By Donald Zuhn — On Monday, Senators Thom Tillis (R-NC) and Tom Cotton (R-AR) sent a letter to Drew Hirshfeld, the Commissioner for Patents at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, to propose that the USPTO conduct a pilot program on a sequenced approach to patent examination. In their letter, Sen. Tillis (at right), the…
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By Donald Zuhn — Last month, Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC), the Ranking Member of the Subcommittee on Intellectual Property of the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, sent a letter to President Biden regarding the selection of the next Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Sen.…
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