The US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has recently in its Federal Register published a public rulemaking notice proposing that it wants to stop the mailing of issued patents to the inventors.
As part of this proposed change, the USPTO would issue all patents electronically using its patent document viewing systems, i.e., Patent Center and Patent Application Image Retrieval (PAIR). According to the notice, patents would go paperless, i.e., no longer issued on paper. Consequently, patents would no longer be mailed to any address of record submitted during the patent issuance process.
The USPTO said in a recent statement delivered that this proposed change, done via a digital seal, will shave two weeks off the time to patent issuance.
The notice reads that once the patent number and issuance date are assigned, electronic patent publication would lead to electronic patent issuance under the USPTO seal and along with the Director’s signature within only one week, in place of three weeks. It further mentions that by putting an end to the assembling, printing, and mailing of a paper patent upon its issuance, the USPTO would conveniently reduce the pendency of every issued patent application by roughly two weeks. In this way, the patent applicants and the public at large would undoubtedly benefit from the time saved. Additionally, the notice states that the patentees would easily be able to view and print their electronically issued patents, along with their cover sheets, via the USPTO’s patent document viewing systems, instead of waiting for their paper patent to arrive in their mail.
As per the public stats put forward by the USPTO, the office issued 388,900 patents last year, out of which 352,049 were 20-year utility patents.
The public is most welcome to comment on the proposed change by 14th February 2022.
No rule change as of now would be required to implement similar changes to Trademark Registration certificates; however, the USPTO still looks forward to soliciting public feedback concerning its proposal to replace paper trademark registration certificates with digital versions. Presently, the USPTO issues 6,000 to 9,000 printed trademark registration certificates every week; therefore, the change would significantly reduce the paper processing and associated costs.
The notice also states that stakeholders who still may want the paper ‘presentation copies’ of their issued patents and trademark registration certificates can get the same with an embossed gold seal and the Director’s signature in exchange for a nominal fee of $25 per copy. For more visit: https://www.trademarkmaldives.com
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