Patent Law Practice Center

PTO Hopes New Patent Application Alert Service Will Increase Third-Party Submissions

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.

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Patent Docs: USPTO Proposed Rule Changes

We are pleased to share the latest from our friends at PatentDocs.org, the Biotech and Pharma Patent Law and News Blog. The authors, Donald Zuhn and Kevin Noonan, are partners at McDonnell Boehnen Hulbert & Berghoff, LLP, and contribute to Patent Docs on a daily basis. Today’s post comes from a collection of articles on Patent Docs covering the different proposed rule changes announced by the USPTO: preissuance submissions provision, statute of limitations provisions for office disciplinary proceedings, and oath or declaration provisions. (more…)