Effective on or about Thursday, October 19, 2006, the computer-delivered registration examination will make the 8th Edition, Revision 4 of the Manual of Patent Examination Procedure (MPEP) available on the computer monitor. As of that date, all questions on the examination will be based on the contents of the 8th Edition, Revision 4 of the MPEP .

The last day of testing for the 8th Edition, Revision 2 of the MPEP is expected to be Tuesday, October 17, 2006.

The format of the examination will remain the same. Thus, computer-delivered examinations will include 100 multiple-choice questions, and only ninety of the questions will be scored. To pass the examination a candidate must correctly answer seventy percent (sixty-three) of the ninety scored questions. Each of the scored questions has been used on previous examination forms and had been psychometrically analyzed to ensure the question provides a useful assessment of a candidate's legal qualifications.

Ten of the questions on the computer-delivered examination will be undergoing beta testing. The ten beta test questions will be distributed throughout the examination. The ten beta test questions will not be identified and will not be scored. These questions will be psychometrically analyzed to assess if the questions are too simple, too complex, or too ambiguous to serve as an adequate basis for measuring candidates' legal qualifications. Accordingly, these questions will not be included in the scoring of a candidate's examination or in determining whether a candidate has passed or failed an examination. Beta test questions will not be available for review, for example, by candidates who do not pass the examination.

Beta test questions that are found to accurately measure candidates' legal qualifications will be introduced into future examination forms and scored. The future examination forms will include different beta test questions. In this manner, the Office will continue to beta test new questions in the registration examination to identify questions capable of measuring candidates' legal qualifications and add those questions to the data bank of questions that can be used and scored in the registration examination.