[Federal Register: May 3, 2010 (Volume 75, Number 84)]
[Notices][Page 23227-23235]
From the Federal Register Online via GPO Access [wais.access.gpo.gov]
[DOCID:fr03my10-43]
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DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE
Patent and Trademark Office
Initial Patent Applications
ACTION: Proposed collection; comment request.
To view the complete text of this comment request see:
http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=2010_register&docid=fr03my10-43
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SUMMARY: The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), as part of its continuing efforts to reduce paperwork and respondent burden, invites the general public and other Federal agencies to take this opportunity to comment on this revision of a continuing information collection, as required by the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995, Public Law 104-13 (44 U.S.C. 3506(c)(2)(A)).
DATES: Written comments must be submitted on or before July 2, 2010.
ADDRESSES: You may submit comments by any of the following methods:
E-mail: InformationCollection@uspto.gov. Include ``0651-0032 comment'' in the subject line of the message.
Fax: 571-273-0112, marked to the attention of Susan K.
Fawcett.
Mail: Susan K. Fawcett, Records Officer, Office of the Chief Information Officer, U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, P.O. Box 1450, Alexandria, VA 22313-1450.
Federal e-Rulemaking Portal: http://www.regulations.gov.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Requests for additional information should be directed to the attention of Raul Tamayo, Legal Advisor, Office of Patent Legal Administration, U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, P.O. Box 1450, Alexandria, VA 22313-1450; by telephone at 571-272-7728; or by e-mail at raul.tamayo@uspto.gov with ``Paperwork'' in the subject line.
SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION
I. Abstract
The USPTO is required by Title 35 of the United States Code,including 35 U.S.C. 131, to examine applications for patents. The USPTO administers the patent statues through various rules in Chapter 37 of the Code of Federal Regulations, including 37 CFR 1.16 through 1.84. The patent statutes and regulations require applicants to provide sufficient information to allow the USPTO to properly examine the application to determine whether it meets the criteria set forth in the patent statutes and regulations to be issued as a patent.
Most applications for patent, including new utility, design, and provisional applications, can be submitted to the USPTO on paper or through EFS-Web. EFS-Web is the USPTO's system for electronic filing of patent correspondence. EFS-Web is accessible via the Internet on the USPTO Web site. The system utilizes standard Web-based screens and prompts to enable users to submit patent documents in Portable Document Format (PDF) directly to the USPTO. The Legal Framework for EFS-Web, available at http://www.uspto.gov/patents/process/file/efs/guidance/ New_legal_framework.jsp, provides a listing of patent applications and documents permitted to be filed via EFS-Web and patent applications and
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documents not permitted to be filed via EFS-Web.
The USPTO has identified continuation/divisional of an international application, utility continuation/divisional, design continuation/divisional, continued prosecution application--design, utility continuation-in-part, and design continuation-in-part applications as types of applications that can be filed electronically that were not identified as being able to be filed electronically in the last renewal of this collection.
The USPTO has also determined that the papers filed under 37 CFR1.41 to supply the name or names of the inventor or inventors after the filing date without a cover sheet as prescribed by 37 CFR 1.51(c)(1) in a provisional application, 37 CFR 1.48 for correction of inventorshipin a provisional application, and 37 CFR 1.53(c)(2) to convert anonprovisional application filed under 37 CFR 1.53(b) to a provisional application under 37 CFR 1.53(c), which were originally overlooked, should be added into the collection at this time. These papers also have a processing fee associated with them that will be added into the collection as well. All of the other fees remain the same.
In order to get a more specific accounting of the additional fees
and surcharges that can be applied to the various applications and to simplify the entry of these items into ROCIS, additional application groups have been broken out in this renewal. Previously, the utility, design, and plant applications were broken out in a manner that helped calculate the filing, search, and examination fees, but not in a manner that help calculate the additional fees and surcharges, which made it difficult to calculate the total burden for some of these applications.
There are 28 forms in this collection. The petitions and the papers filed to supply the name or names of the inventor or inventors after the filing date without a cover sheet in a provisional application, to correct inventorship in a provisional application, and to convert a nonprovisional application to a provisional application do not have forms associated with them.