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"Reform" at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office

By Donald Zuhn, Kevin Noonan, Chris Singer, Sherri Oslick, and Jason Derry

By Kevin E. Noonan -- Senate bill S. 23 (the "America Invents Act") contains several provisions changing the statutory authority of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (falling short, fortunately, of giving the Office substantive rule-making authority). The most far-reaching of these changes is contained in Section 9, which gives the Office (for the first time) the authority to set its own fees. (Anyone who remembers the proposal in the earlier part of the last decade to use significantly escalating fees "solve" the "excess filings" problem, which has matured into the backlog problem, will be understandably skeptical of the motivations...

Full post as published by Patent Docs on March 23, 2011 (boomark / email).