Bluesky: @oppedahl.com
It will be recalled that recently the USPTO announced that it will change the way that electronic certified copies of priority documents are transmitted between the USPTO and the Japanese Patent Office. The change takes effect today. Among other things, this will affect how you complete your Application Data Sheet to present a priority claim to a Japanese patent application.
You can read about it in my blog post from September 24, 2017.
(Note that this article was posted in 2017. The reader should bring himself or herself up to date before proceeding. For example the MPEP now adds a different and supposedly “preferred” fax number. And the amount of the government fee has changed.)
Many readers doubtless already know how to get a faxed Foreign Filing License from the USPTO. But a recent posting on the EFS-Web listserv prompts me to post this article describing the Best Practice for such a request. Continue reading “Getting a faxed Foreign Filing License from the USPTO”
For the past year or so, it has been taking the USPTO around 4-5 weeks to issue a patent. Continue reading “How long it takes USPTO to issue a patent”
Somehow it got put on the back burner, but finally I have sorted and published the results for the 2016 US Utility Patent Tote Board and the 2016 US Trademark Tote Board. You can see all of the Tote Boards here.
Do you sometimes file a US patent application that claims priority from a Japanese patent application? Do you sometimes give instructions to Japanese counsel to file a Japanese patent application that claims priority from a US patent application? In either case, you need to know about something important that will change on October 1, 2017. Continue reading “Japan and PDX and October 1”
There are quite a few upcoming opportunities to learn about the Patent Cooperation Treaty.
Of course a very good way to learn of upcoming learning opportunities about PCT is to check the PCT Seminar Calendar at the web site of WIPO. WIPO updates this calendar frequently.
Upcoming programs include:
Here is a delightful dinner during a several-day program on the Patent Cooperation Treaty. These are some of the attendees at a Patent Resources Group course in San Diego.
The fee that ISA/SG charges per invention to carry out a PCT search will increase on November 1, 2017. The fee charged in US dollars will increase from $1552 to $1645. Continue reading “ISA/SG fee to increase on November 1, 2017”
At various times in the past, the USPTO has accumulated sizeable backlogs in its not-yet-handled PPH petitions. But these days USPTO has been keeping up quite well.
We try to track this pretty closely. The most recent half dozen PPH petitions that we filed at the USPTO were all acted upon at the USPTO within about six or seven weeks of filing.
Kudos to the USPTO for being timely these days with PPH petitions!
A couple of weeks ago I had the great honor to visit at WIPO with the heads of some of the PCT processing teams. These are the people at the International Bureau who interact with callers (applicants and patent practitioners) who have questions and problems relating to PCT. One of the things that they mentioned to me, that I found puzzling when I first heard it, is that in recent months they have received ever-increasing numbers of complaints from people who call to report that they try to send faxes to the International Bureau and are unable to do so. Upon reflection I now realize the likely cause of this problem. And it is definitely not that there is some recent malfunction in WIPO’s fax machines.
Continue reading “Why you probably can’t send international faxes any more”