August 01, 2000
#00-46

USPTO Holds Workshops on American Inventors Protection Act and Electronic Commerce

USPTO Holds Workshops on American Inventors Protection Act and Electronic Commerce

PRESS RELEASE

The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is currently holding free, one-day, educational workshops across the country at Patent and Trademark Depository Libraries (PTDL) detailing implementation of the American Inventors Protection Act of 1999 (AIPA) and introducing the agency?s electronic commerce initiatives.

The AIPA sessions will focus on new USPTO procedures implementing Request for Continued Examination; Patent Term Adjustment; Eighteen-Month Publication; and Inter Partes Reexamination.

"USPTO?s ?Patents 2000 Customer Outreach Program? is designed to help registered patent attorneys/agents, legal staff and independent inventors understand the impact of the AIPA, which became law in late 1999 and contains the most far-reaching changes to the U.S. patent system in nearly 50 years," noted Q. Todd Dickinson, Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of USPTO.

The highlights of the electronic commerce segment are Patent Application Information Retrieval (PAIR) - How to access information about your patent application or any issued patents/published application via the Internet; Electronic Filing System (EFS) - How to file a patent application online; Changes to PAIR and EFS to support implementation of the AIPA and whether or not you will need to use PAIR and EFS as a result of AIPA implementation; and Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) - How the USPTO protects your application information on the Internet.

"In the past year or so, USPTO has instituted an ambitious array of electronic commerce initiatives designed to help make interacting with the agency easier and more efficient. This series of workshops will increase the agency?s e-commerce business by familiarizing our customers with these programs," Dickinson also said.

In each city, there will be two workshops, one planned for attorneys and large corporations and one planned for independent inventors. The workshops will be presented as interactive lectures with ample opportunity for questions and answers.

Reservation and contact information for USPTO?s Patents 2000 Customer Program workshops follows.

The Free Library of Philadelphia; Philadelphia, PA - August 9 and 10
Contact: (215) 686-5331

Science, Industry and Business Library, New York Public Library; New York, NY - September 7 and 8
Contact: (212) 592-7044

Fondren Library, Rice University; Houston, TX - September 14 and 15
Contact: (713) 348-5483; scippr@rice.edu

USPTO; Arlington, VA - September 19 and 20
Contact: (703) 305-8341

Boston Public Library; Boston, MA - September 26 and 27
Contact: (617) 536-5400 ext. 265

Engineering Library, University of Washington; Seattle, WA - October 16 and 17
Contact: (206) 685-8371; englib@u.washington.edu

Chicago Public Library; Chicago, IL - October 30 and 31
Contact: (312) 747-4447

Milwaukee Public Library; Milwaukee, WI - November 2 and 3
Contact: (414) 286-3000

For more information about the Patents 2000 Customer Outreach Program, please go to www.uspto.gov and click on American Inventors Protection Act or the Patent Electronic Business Center.

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