March 14, 2001
#01-12
Brigid Quinn
Maria V. Hernandez
703-305-8341
USPTO Schedules Workshops on Electronic Government Initiatives and the American Inventors Protection Act
USPTO Schedules Workshops on Electronic Government Initiatives and the American Inventors Protection Act
PRESS RELEASE
The U. S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has scheduled educational workshops in cities across the United States to introduce the agency's patent-related electronic government initiatives and to explain rules and regulations implementing recent changes to patent law.
The electronic government segment of the workshop will show customers how to file a patent application online, using the agency's state-of-the-art electronic filing software. The system assembles all application components, calculates fees, validates application content, compresses, encrypts and transmits the filing to USPTO. The agency uses the latest public key infrastructure technology to guarantee the security of electronic applications. The session will also demonstrate how to access patent application information on line.
"USPTO fully implemented electronic filing this past November," noted Nicholas Godici, acting Under Secretary of Commerce and acting Director of the USPTO. "Now, anyone can file an application for a new invention with USPTO using the Internet. Our goal is to make doing business electronically standard operating procedure at USPTO."
The second segment of the workshop will explain new USPTO procedures for implementing the American Inventors Protection Act of 1999, which produced the most far-reaching changes to patent law in over 50 years. This segment will focus on procedures for Request for Continued Examination, Patent Term Adjustment, Eighteen-Month Publication, and Inter Partes Reexamination. There will also be discussions about significant changes in the Patent Business Goals final rule, which simplifies patent application filing.
Reservation and contact information for USPTO's Patents Customer 2001 Program workshops is available on USPTO's website at http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/dcom/olia/aipa/aipaseminar/index.html . The site will be updated with additional workshop locations as they are scheduled.
# # #
