The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) recently announced a new service called the Patent Application Alert Service (PAAS). The PAAS is a result of a partnership between the USPTO and Reed Tech, a LexisNexis company. Substantively, the PAAS is a system that provides customized email alerts to the public for free when a patent application is published. Users of the system create an account and then save one or more searches.
“The purpose of the tool is to find out about the latest happenings, it is not about being able to search going back, it is about what is current,” explained Dave Abbott, Vice President for Government Solutions at Reed Tech. “There was never an intent for the Office to compete with the commercial providers.”
According to the USPTO, the Patent Application Alert Service enables individuals to stay up-to-date with potentially relevant pre-grant publications of patent applications at the USPTO. Through customizable alerts, individuals who sign up and create a search will be notified when a patent application is published by the USPTO, together with a concise description of the asserted relevance of each document reported.
The idea for a service to alert interested parties about published patent applications was spawned by a discussion started at one of the many roundtable listening tour events the USPTO has conducted across the country over the last several years. When initially discussed, the goal was to create a system that would alert interested individuals about published applications to efficiently raise awareness about filings so that those who might be interested in submitting third party prior art would be able to do so in a timely fashion.
Third-party submissions of prior art became available as a procedural mechanism to alert patent examiners of relevant prior art beginning September 16, 2012. According to the USPTO website, between September 16, 2012, and April 24, 2015, there were only 9,941 such submissions (see chart below).
The pre-issuance submission of prior art for consideration by a patent examiner was one of the many changes brought about by the America Invents Act (AIA). Championed by many individuals and companies that continually complain about low-quality patents, third-party pre-issuance submissions of prior art have seldom been used. Over the time frame when fewer than 10,000 such submissions were filed, the Patent Office received over 1.5 million new patent applications, with another 1 million patent applications remaining pending. Believing the submission of prior art to be a useful crowdsourcing tool, and frustrated by the absolute lack of interest by stakeholders, the Office has ever since been interested in finding ways to make the system more useful. The belief is that PAAS will make it easier for individuals to know what is happening in a particular area so that they can participate by informing patent examiners of relevant prior art they possess.
Getting information out quickly to those who may be interested in filing a third-party pre-issuance submission is critical because a submission must be filed prior to the earlier of: (1) the date a notice of allowance is given or mailed in the application; or (2) the later of: (i) six months after the date on which the application is first published by the USPTO, or (ii) the date the first rejection of any claim by the examiner is given or mailed during the examination of the application. See 37 C.F.R. § 1.290(b). Therefore, action should be taken quickly once publication occurs.
The Patent Office is excited that this new alert service is a direct result of efforts to engage stakeholders and is hopeful that it will be useful with respect to enhancing the quality of patent examination and issued patents. Time will tell.
Tags: patent, Patent Office, patents, preissuance submission, preissuance submissions, USPTO
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