Patent and Trademark Office October 14, 2021 – Federal Register Recent Federal Regulation Documents

The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO or Office) is amending the rules of practice to permit higher-capacity physical media to be submitted to the USPTO. Patent applications for certain inventions require significant data in American Standard Code for Information Interchange (ASCII) plain text format to be submitted to the USPTO in order to determine whether the invention described in the patent application is patentable. When submission of such data exceeds the USPTO's patent electronic filing system capacity, submission of large data submission in ASCII plain text format can be made on physical media. To that end, the rules of practice are amended to provide applicants with the ability to use physical media larger than compact discs (CDs) for submission of data in ASCII plain text format, such as an electronic version of amino acid and nucleotide sequence information, information compiled in a large table, or information related to a computer program listing. Additionally, extraction of compressed data files, which had not been permitted in the past for certain submissions, will be permitted if the compressed data files are compliant with the requirements of the rules. Other rules related to certain obsolete and non-secure methods of presenting data are eliminated.