All you need to know about the new USPTO procedures

09 February 2012

Eileen McDermott, New York

Fees are too high, page limits are prohibitive and litigators will be more in demand – these are some initial reactions to the USPTO’s proposed rules on various proceedings mandated by the America Invents Act

The rules for post-grant review, inter partes review, covered business methods review and derivation proceedings were published Tuesday night on the USPTO website, although they will not be officially published in the Federal Register until Friday. This is not normal practice, but because the Office of Management and Budget took longer to grant clearance to publish the rules, the Office was behind schedule and wanted to avoid confusion over the separately published list of proposed new patent fees which was published late Tuesday.

Those fees are being promulgated pursuant to the fee setting authority the Office was granted under Section 10 of the America Invents Act and include fees for the proceedings covered by the latest rules package.

A massive project The rules are about 600 pages in total in their current format – significantly less lengthy than the rumoured 3,000 pages. “Overall, this is a massive project and the...

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