Department of Commerce December 17, 2009 – Federal Register Recent Federal Regulation Documents

The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) published a notice on Legal Framework for Electronic Filing System-Web (EFS-Web) to set forth the current policy and procedure for using EFS- Web and to permit a holder of a public key infrastructure (PKI) certificate to designate a single employee of a contractor who may use the PKI certificate under the direction and control of the holder. The USPTO received many suggestions and inquiries from users of EFS-Web and the Patent Application Information Retrieval (PAIR) system. In response to the suggestions, the USPTO is expanding the procedure for PKI certificates to permit a holder of a PKI certificate to designate more than one employee to use the PKI certificate under the direction and control of the holder in accordance with the revised PKI subscriber agreement and the rules and policies of the USPTO.