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NEWS - AUGUST 2007US Patent law: The United Sates Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has published on 21 August 2007 new procedural rules relating to continuing applications, requests for continued examination and the practise for the examination of patent claims. Under the new rules an applicant may file two new continuing applications and one request for continued examination as a matter of right. The filing of any further continuing application, or request for continued examination, must be accompanied by a justification as to why the amendment, argument, or evidence sought to be entered could not have been previously submitted. With respect to divisional applications the new rules provide that a divisional application may be filed with respect to claims which were non-elected pursuant to a restriction requirement, at any time whilst the application that was subject to the restriction requirement, or any continuing application thereof, is pending. It is also possible to file two continuing applications of the divisional application and one request for continued examination without requiring any justification. The rules of practise for the examination of claims have been revised such that where an application contains more than 25 claims, or more than 5 independent claims, the applicant will be required to provide the USPTO with additional information relevant to the claimed invention. The required additional information will include a prior-art search and explanation as to the relevancy of the prior art documents found in the search, with respect to all of the claims. Finally, the office has also revised the rules of practise with respect to multiple applications from the same assignee having patentably indistinct subject matter, whereby the USPTO will require either that all of the patentably indistinct claims be submitted in a single application, or will treat all of the applications as a single patent application. It is the aim of the USPTO that these rule changes will provide for improved quality of granted patents through a more effective and efficient examination procedure. The rule changes will come into force on 01 November 2007. For further information see: |