USPTO is closed today, Monday, March 17 as a snow day.
Anything that you might have needed to file today to meet a USPTO due date may be postponed until tomorrow, Tuesday March 18. But there are some things to watch out for.
USPTO relaxes rules for CPAs in design patent applications
The AIA rules published August 14, 2012 gave a patent applicant a free pass on handing in the signed inventor declaration late, indeed extremely late. The 2012 rules permitted the applicant to postpone handing in the declaration until as late as the time of allowance.
But not for CPAs (continued prosecution applications) from design patent applications. Due to an oversight in the 2012 AIA rulemaking, this free pass was not extended to CPAs in that rulemaking. On March 5, 2014 the USPTO published a rule change correcting the oversight and extending the free pass to CPAs.
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Important upcoming industrial design events
A number of recent developments have forced practitioners, even those who never thought that design patents were important, to pay attention to design patents. The Apple v. Samsung litigation, in which a jury verdict of nearly a billion dollars was awarded to Apple, largely on its design patents. The imminent accession of the US to the Hague Agreement, which will permit US filers to use the Hague process as a one-stop-shopping way to file for design protection in many countries at once.
Here are some important upcoming events in this area:
- A Roundtable on the Written Description Requirement for Design Applications, March 5 at the USPTO
- Design Day, April 8 at the USPTO (see details at AIPLA, IPO)
Those practitioners who wish to join in discussions with other practitioners about developments in industrial design protection may wish to subscribe to the Industrial Designs listserv.