Revision of Power of Attorney and Assignment Practice

The United States Patent and Trademark Office (Office) is revising the rules of practice to allow for more efficient processing of powers of attorney and assignment documents within the Office. For example, the Office will require applicants to use the Office's Customer Number practice if more than ten registered patent practitioners are to be made of record. In addition, the Office is eliminating some mail stops (i.e., CPA, Provisional Patent Application) that were found not be useful in routing correspondence within the Office, and creating a new mail stop (Licensing and Review) to assist the Office in the proper routing of national security classified and secrecy order papers. Finally, because the Office is discontinuing the current Office practice of returning patent and trademark assignment documents submitted by mail for recording in the assignment database, only copies of assignment documents may be submitted for recording in the Office's Assignment records.