2021-27117: Electronic Patent Issuance
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The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is proposing to implement electronic patent issuance. Under the proposed change, the USPTO would issue patents electronically through its patent document viewing systems (i.e., Patent Center and Patent Application Image Retrieval (PAIR)). Patents would no longer be issued on paper, and as a result, they would no longer be mailed to the correspondence address of record as part of the patent issuance process. The elimination of these steps would allow issued patents to be available weeks sooner in electronic form, and the patentee would be able to view and print the complete issued patent via the USPTO's patent document viewing systems immediately upon issue. Patentees would continue to have the option of ordering an unlimited number of paper presentation copies and certified copies of patents.
The agency’s own summary, as published.
What this changes
Amends 1 part of the Code of Federal Regulations — the standing rules this notice rewrites.
Rulemaking docket
We haven’t pulled this rulemaking’s full docket yet. View docket PTO-P-2021-0007 on Regulations.gov →
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