The following post was written by Gene Quinn , of IPWatchdog and Practice Center Contributor.

The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) will update its registration examination and provide new reference materials effective April 12, 2011. The changes will help ensure that newly registered patent attorneys and agents are fully qualified in the most current patent laws, rules and procedures.  This change marks the first change to the exam in approximately 5 years, and will bring the patent bar exam current with law, rules and regulations through the Winter of 2011. Those who are interested in taking the patent bar exam should consider this update a major revision, indeed such a major revision to the test that old patent bar exams circulating the Internet will be an insufficient means to study for the new exam.

“Patent applicants and examiners will benefit from the updated registration examination because newly registered patent attorneys and agents will have demonstrated familiarity with the most current patent laws, rules and procedures,” said Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the USPTO David Kappos.

All applicants wishing to practice in patent cases before the USPTO must pass the registration exam consisting of 100 multiple choice questions. The revised exam questions will be based on the Manual of Patent Examining Procedure (MPEP) Edition 8, Revision 8, along with other published USPTO policy and procedure reference materials. Administration of the previous version of the registration examination ceased April 4, 2011.

Click here for the full IPWatchdog article.

Tags: David Kappos, ksr v. teleflex, Manual of Patent Examining Procedure, MPEP, patent applicants, Patent Bar Exam, USPTO

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 12th, 2011 at 16:17 and is filed under Patent Bar Exam. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.