Changes To Support Implementation of the United States Patent and Trademark Office 21st Century Strategic Plan

The United States Patent and Trademark Office (Office) has established a 21st Century Strategic Plan to transform the Office into a quality-focused, highly productive, responsive organization supporting a market-driven intellectual property system. The noteworthy changes in this final rule are: Providing for an alternative signature on a number of submissions; adjusting the fees for a number of patent- related petitions to reflect the actual cost of processing these petitions; codifying the current incorporation by reference practice and also providing the conditions under which a claim for priority or benefit of a prior-filed application would be considered an incorporation by reference of the prior-filed application; expanding the submissions that can be filed on a compact disc; eliminating the requirement for copies of U.S. patents or U.S. patent application publications cited in an information disclosure statement for all applications; providing that a request for information may contain interrogatories or requests for stipulations seeking technical factual information actually known by the applicant; providing that supplemental replies will no longer be entered as a matter of right; providing for the treatment of preliminary amendments present as of the filing date of an application as part of the original disclosure; and eliminating the requirement in a reissue application for the actual physical surrender by applicant of the original Letters Patent.