Patent and Trademark Office January 2023 – Federal Register Recent Federal Regulation Documents

The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) plays an important role in incentivizing and protecting innovation, including innovation driven by artificial intelligence (AI), to ensure continued U.S. leadership in AI and other emerging technologies (ET). The USPTO's Texas Regional Office will host a public meeting on innovation driven by AI on February 8, 2023, at 11 a.m. CT. The meeting will be held in collaboration with the Dallas Bar Association (DBA) Intellectual Property (IP) section and the State Bar of Texas IP section. This will be the third meeting in the USPTO's AI/ET Partnership Series. First announced in June 2022, the AI/ET Partnership provides an opportunity to bring stakeholders together through a series of engagements to share ideas, feedback, experiences, and insights on the intersection of IP and AI/ET.

The United States Patent and Trademark Office (Office or USPTO) published a request for comments in the Federal Register on October 18, 2022, seeking comments from the public on the requirements to practice before the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB). Through this notice, the Office is extending the period for written public comments until January 31, 2023.

To speed up patent examination and give applicants more comprehensive prior art by combining the search expertise of United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), Japan Patent Office (JPO), and Korean Intellectual Property Office (KIPO) examiners before issuing a first Office action, the USPTO, in partnership with the JPO and the KIPO, is extending the Expanded Collaborative Search Pilot (CSP) program for an additional two years, through October 31, 2024. Requests to participate in the Expanded CSP program that were filed between October 31, 2022, and January 18, 2023, will be considered. In addition, the partner intellectual property (IP) offices have collaborated on a new petition option for participation in the Expanded CSP program. The new petition option, which has several enhancements compared to the current petition form and process, permits an applicant to file a combined petition in either the USPTO or one of the partner IP offices rather than separate petitions in each office. Enhancements include a more user-friendly layout, the addition of multilingual text, and a foundation for data collection that both satisfies the petition requirements and streamlines the process for partaking in the Expanded CSP program.