Department of Commerce February 14, 2023 – Federal Register Recent Federal Regulation Documents

The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is extending the comment period for the notice titled ``Request for Comments on USPTO Initiatives to Ensure the Robustness and Reliability of Patent Rights'' that was published in the Federal Register on October 4, 2022. The notice's comment period was previously extended until February 1, 2023. The comment period is now extended a second time; this will be the last extension of the comment period.

In this rule, the Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) amends the Export Administration Regulations (EAR) by adding six entities to the Entity List, under the destination of the People's Republic of China (China). These six entities have been determined by the U.S. Government to be acting contrary to the national security or foreign policy interests of the United States.

The Internet of Things (IoT) Advisory Board will meet Tuesday, March 7, 2023; Tuesday, April 18, 2023 and Wednesday, April 19, 2023; and Tuesday, May 16, 2023 and Wednesday, May 17, 2023 from 11:00 a.m. until 5:00 p.m., Eastern Time. All sessions will be open to the public.

The Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) in this notice is publishing a report that summarizes the findings of an investigation conducted by the U.S. Department of Commerce (the ``Department'') pursuant to section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, as amended (``section 232''), into the effect of imports of neodymium-iron-boron (NdFeB) permanent magnets on the national security of the United States. This report was completed in June 2022 and posted on the BIS website in September 2022. BIS has not published the appendices to the report in this notification of report findings, but they are available online at the BIS website, along with the rest of the report (see the ADDRESSES section).

The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) plays an important role in incentivizing and protecting innovation, including innovation enabled by artificial intelligence (AI), to ensure continued U.S. leadership in AI and other emerging technologies (ET). In June 2022, the USPTO announced the formation of the AI/ET Partnership, which provides an opportunity to bring stakeholders together through a series of engagements to share ideas, feedback, experiences, and insights on the intersection of intellectual property and AI/ET. To build on the AI/ET Partnership efforts, the USPTO is seeking stakeholder input on the current state of AI technologies and inventorship issues that may arise in view of the advancement of such technologies, especially as AI plays a greater role in the innovation process. As outlined in sections II to IV below, the USPTO is pursuing three main avenues of engagement with stakeholders to inform its future efforts on inventorship and promoting AI-enabled innovation: a series of stakeholder engagement sessions; collaboration with academia through scholarly research; and a request for written comments to the questions identified in section IV. The USPTO encourages stakeholder engagement through one or more of these avenues.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is hosting a public workshop to inform an update of the ANSI/NIST-ITL standard, ``Data Format for the Interchange of Fingerprint, Facial & Other Biometric Information.'' This event will be completely virtual and occur February 21-23, 2023, from 9:00 a.m.-4:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. The purpose of this workshop is to solicit recommendations to identify and pursue updates needed to the above- referenced standard.