Just a Patent Examiner

The PTO put out a press release today regarding President Obama's 2011 budget request for the USPTO.Significantly, the budget request will enable the Office to resume the hiring of examiners.Specifically, it will allow the Office to "[i]nitiate a targeted hiring surge and hire 1,000 patent examiners annually during FY 2011...

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The Office sent an email earlier this week, notifying the corps that the changes to the count system will be taking effect starting on February 14th. (Happy Valentine's Day!)For a while, examiners' production will be tracked under both the old and new count systems, with the examiner being graded...

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A few days ago, Greg Aharonian of the Internet Patent News Service relayed the following note that a frustrated attorney had sent to Director Kappos:---Dear Mr. Kappos,I have been practicing before the USPTO for 12 years now and have seena lot of ridiculous stuff, but this takes the cake. ...

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The Patent Office is taking some interesting measures in an effort to reduce the backlog. Last week, the corps received an email detailing plans to offer ex-examiners the opportunity to return to the patent office. From the email:---Faced with a growing backlog and long patent pendency periods in...

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Effective Sunday, November 8th, the Office's Revised Count System Initiatives will go into effect, except for those initiatives that will require updates to the Office's software systems.Most significantly, that means that the new provisions for the docketing of RCEs will come online.The following initiatives will be effective this Sunday:* ...

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The Director has been posting weekly to his blog, on a variety of subjects.Two weeks ago, he posted on the union's adoption of the proposed new count system.---I wanted to take this opportunity to express my thanks to POPA's membership for voting to adopt the changes to the count system...

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A few quick notes about the goings on of late at the Office.The USPTO's new website went online on October 8th.The Office has withdrawn its proposed Continuation Rules Changes. You can read about it at Patently-O and 271. Also, the USPTO's press release.Dr. Triantafyllos Tafas, one of the...

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The AIPLA is in town again this week for their Annual Meeting.As part of that Annual Meeting, they will be holding the 16th incarnation of Partnering in Patents, 'An Open Dialog Between the USPTO and the Bar' tomorrow afternoon.These sessions take place at the USPTO, giving the PTO and attorneys...

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The Office on Wednesday afternoon notified the examining corps of the details of their proposal for a new count system. The Broad BrushThe new count system includes the following elements:Count System Changes and More Time for Examiners: The proposed changes will give examiners more time overall, more time for...

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Well, the Office has kicked off its formal effort to reform the examiners' production system.The PTO sent the following email this morning to its employees:Joint Union and Management Task Force Begins Work of Addressing the Patent Examiner Count SystemOn Tuesday, August 25, a task force comprised of four members from...

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Newly sworn-in Director of the USPTO, David Kappos, has started a blog.I'd link to it, but for the time being, it's hosted on the internal USPTO servers, available only to employees of the Office. However, according to the announcement, "we plan to make the blog available to the public...

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An examiner's job is to sift through the prior art and figure out if an applicant's claims are novel and nonobvious. It should be a completely dispassionate and objective process, driven by only the scope of the claims as presented and what exists in the prior art (speaking in...

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The PTO recently posted a beta version of a new web page.I haven't had a whole lot of time to peruse it, but I've gotta say, it seems to be quite an improvement over the current one, which is little more than a list of disorganized links. Not perfect,...

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Q. Todd Dickenson, the once and (perhaps) future Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office, participated in a panel discussion titled "A Model Patent Office for the Future -- Promoting and Protecting Investments in Innovation" at the BIO International Convention.Q....

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Gene Quinn at IPWatchdog has posted about examiners being given direction to 'allow more applications'.This is presumably related to the initiatives that Acting Commissioner for Patents Peggy Focarino spoke with him about a couple of weeks ago regarding the Office's recent initiatives (such as by making better use of interviews)...

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Apparently, the PTO is not the only federal IP agency that is running a large backlog.The Washington Post ran a story today detailing the accumulation of a large backlog in processing copyright applications at the U.S. Copyright Office.I found the article interesting in that the copyright backlog is apparently the...

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It would seem to be self evident that ensuring the high quality of issued patents is of benefit to everybody.The Office has a number of mechanisms in place to ensure the high quality of patents. Among them are the Office of Patent Quality Assurance (OPQA), and the second pair...

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A couple of weeks ago, the Corps received some more info on the State of the Office, and how the current economic problems are impacting us.Some highlights:At the current rate of patent filings, the Office will end the year down 2% from FY 2008 levels. Not good, since the...

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Another casualty of the economy. The examining corps received an email today that the Non-Duty Hours Legal Studies Program has been suspended, effective March 16th. This is the program that pays the tuition for examiners to attend law school.The program has been suspended in the past, and it...

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I like books. So much so that I am only very rarely let loose in a bookstore by myself. Otherwise, I will find a book or three that I simply must buy. And truthfully, I've got too many books in my house as it is.Worse yet is...

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Patent Debate, which was a service of ip.com, has apparently met its demise.It allowed anyone to comment on published applications. The idea was to allow people to offer opinions as to the patentability of a pending application.I thought it was a great idea when it first came out, but...

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On February 10th, the USPTO will host two virtual booths at the CareerBuilder.com Engineering Virtual Career Fair online, from 9AM to 8PM EST. Candidates can visit the USPTO virtual "Entry Level" or "Electrical Engineering" booth to learn about the USPTO and obtain key agency information such as patent examiner...

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Dennis at Patently-O recently wrote a post about the applicant's duty of inquiry. This means that an applicant is obliged to actually read the references that they decide are relevant enough to submit in an Information Disclosure Statement. I can't disagree with this; if I have to read...

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The USPTO resumed onsite weekly interview sessions last week at the Alexandria campus on Tuesdays and Thursdays until March 16th, 2009.The USPTO's goal is to attract qualified applicants who have a bachelors or advanced degree in computer engineering, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, chemical engineering, biomedical engineering, computer science, pharmacology, chemistry...

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Do you think that too many patents issue with claims that are not sufficiently clear?---Well, the CAFC seems to think so; in January of this year, in the Halliburton Energy Services, Inc. v. M-I LLC, 514 F.3d 1244, 1255, 85 USPQ2d 1663 (Fed. Cir. 2008) decision, they said:"When a claim...

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