Ant-Like Persistence

USPTO has announced a Glossary Pilot Program to Promote Patent Claim Clarity.  The program promises to push your patent application to the front of the line (make it “special”) if you provide a glossary in the detailed description portion of the specification, providing a definition of each important term used in the application.  This Glossary Program is a fascinating concept and it provides yet another reminder that there are smart people inside of the USPTO who are willing to try all kinds of approaches in the hope that some of the approaches will turn out to help with our shared goals such as promoting science and the useful arts.  Should you recommend this Glossary Program to your clients?

Continue reading “Should you use USPTO’s new Glossary Pilot Program?”

I never knew this, but it seems that it used to be a patent appellant could pay patent appeal fees by means of a general authorization to charge a Deposit Account.

Starting May 1, 2014, this will no longer be possible.  The appellant that tries to rely upon a general authorization will fail and risks having the appeal dismissed.

Continue reading “USPTO tightens up fee payment options for patent appeals effective May 1, 2014”

Track I (also called “prioritized examination”, and not to be confused with Accelerated Examination) has been available since September of 2011, and permits a patent applicant to move to the front of the examination queue upon payment of an extra $4000 (smaller for small and micro entities).  USPTO has relaxed the formal requirements for Track I as of March 5, 2014.

Importantly, the rule change is retroactive.  If a filer screwed up a Track I request in the past and had it dismissed, the filer may be able to get the request granted now by filing a petition.

Continue reading “USPTO relaxes formal requirements for Track I (and does it retroactively)”

The USPTO has published proposed rules which would impose upon all patent applicants and upon all patent owners a new burden — an obligation to carry out recurring investigations as to “attributable owners” of patent applications and patents, and to report the list of “attributable owners” to the USPTO.  The proposed rules would subject each patent owner to the grave risk, at litigation time, that a court might deem the underlying patent application to have gone abandoned during its pendency before the USPTO due to a real or imagined error in the reported list of “attributable owners”.  The investigation and reporting burden would, for many corporations, add thousands or tens of thousands of dollars to the cost of prosecuting a US patent application.

Comments are due by April 24.  Any corporation that owns US patents should read the proposed rules and, I suggest, should file comments by the due date.  Likewise any patent practitioner that represents corporations before the USPTO should read the proposed rules and, I suggest, should file comments by the due date.  I have filed comments with the USPTO. Continue reading “File your comments by April 24 on proposed patent applicant filing burdens”