Patent and Trademark Office October 2016 – Federal Register Recent Federal Regulation Documents

The United States Patent and Trademark Office (Office or USPTO) proposes to amend its rules regarding petitions to revive an abandoned application and petitions to the Director of the USPTO (Director) regarding other matters, and to codify USPTO practice regarding requests for reinstatement of abandoned applications and cancelled or expired registrations. The proposed changes will permit the USPTO to provide more detailed procedures regarding the deadlines and requirements for requesting revival, reinstatement, or other action by the Director. These rules will thereby ensure that the public has notice of the deadlines and requirements for making such requests, facilitate the efficient and consistent processing of such requests, and promote the integrity of application/registration information in the trademark electronic records system as an accurate reflection of the status of applications and registrations.

Patent applications that contain disclosures of nucleotide and/or amino acid sequences must contain sequence information in a separate part of the disclosure in a specified manner. The United States Patent and Trademark Office (Office) is seeking additional comments to obtain views of the public on the continuing international effort to revise the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) standard for the presentation of nucleotide and/or amino acid sequences and the consequent changes to the United States rules of practice. The revised standard will be known as WIPO Standard ST.26. An interim version of WIPO Standard ST.26 was adopted in March 2016 by the Committee on WIPO Standards (CWS), but has not been implemented pending further consideration by the CWS. Since the adoption of the interim version, efforts have been undertaken to finalize WIPO Standard ST.26 and to improve its effectiveness once implemented. One aspect of that continuing effort is a proposed guidance document annex, which will include a variety of sequence disclosure examples, to ensure understanding and uniform application of standard requirements. Comments may be offered on any aspect of this effort, and in particular, (a) the comprehensiveness and clarity of WIPO Standard ST.26 and the proposed guidance document annex, and (b) the proposed authoring/validation tool for creation of a sequence listing in XML.

The United States Patent and Trademark Office (Office or USPTO) is amending its rules to set or increase certain trademark fees, as authorized by the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act (AIA). The fees will allow the Office to further USPTO strategic objectives by: Better aligning fees with the full cost of the relevant products and services; protecting the integrity of the register by incentivizing more timely filing or examination of applications and other filings and more efficient resolution of appeals and trials; and promoting the efficiency of the process, in large part through lower-cost electronic filing options. The changes will also continue to recover the aggregate estimated cost of Trademark and Trademark Trial and Appeal Board (TTAB) operations and USPTO administrative services that support Trademark operations.

The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), as part of its continuing effort to reduce paperwork and respondent burden, invites the general public and other Federal agencies to take this opportunity to comment on the extension of a continuing information collection, as required by the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995, Public Law 104-13 (44 U.S.C. 3506(c)(2)(A)).

The United States Patent and Trademark Office (Office or USPTO) proposes to set or adjust patent fees as authorized by the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act (Act or AIA). The USPTO is a business- like operation where external factors affect the productivity of the workforce and the demand for patent products and services. The proposed fee adjustments are needed to provide the Office with a sufficient amount of aggregate revenue to recover its aggregate cost of patent operations (based on current projections), while maintaining momentum towards achieving strategic goals. This rulemaking represents the second iteration of patent fee rulemaking by the USPTO to set fees under the authority of the AIA; the first AIA patent fee setting rule was published in January 2013. This current rulemaking is a result of the USPTO assessing its costs and fees, as is consistent with federal fee setting standards. Following a biennial review of fees, costs, and revenues that began in 2015, the Office concluded that further targeted fee adjustments were necessary to continue funding patent operations, enhance patent quality, and continue to work toward patent pendency goals, strengthen the Office's information technology (IT) capability and infrastructure, and achieve operating reserve targets. Further, in several instances, the fee change proposals offered during the biennial fee review process were enhanced by the availability of cost and workload data (e.g., the number of requests for a service) that was not available in 2013. As a result, the 205 proposed fee adjustments outlined in this proposed rule align directly with the Office's strategic goals and four key fee setting policy factors, discussed in detail in Part V.