APLF: Certain US Patent Petitions Need Status Checks

On April 28, 2004, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office announced at that there are a number of submissions for which the Image File Wrapper system has not sent a processing message to the Office of Petitions. Therefore, for certain types of petitions filed after June 30, 2003, the Office is requesting that applicants check the status and send an e-mail alert to the Office.

Petitions Types Affected

Petitions that are decided by the Office of the Deputy Commissioner for Patent Examination Policy, including the Office of Patent Legal Administration and the Office of Petitions. Examples of the most common petitions of these types are petitions to revive applications that are abandoned due to failure to respond to an Office Action, petitions to withdraw an application from issue, and petitions for patent term adjustments. Consult MPEP § 1002.02(b) for the full list of affected petitions.

Petitions Types Not Affected

Petitions for other offices within the USPTO, such as those decided by the Technology Centers (listed in MPEP § 1002.02(c)) or the Office of Publications (listed in MPEP § 1002.02(r)), are not part of this program and applicants should not send an e-mail alert to the Office pursuant to this notice.

Temporary Procedures for Alerts

1. Confirm that a petition filed after June 30, 2003, of the types listed in MPEP § 1002.02(b), has not been answered, either by checking your records or checking the postings on the Office's Patent Application Information Retrieval (PAIR) system.

2. If the applicant has not received a response to the petition, or seen a response posted on the PAIR system, send an e-mail alert to petitions@uspto.gov with the following information:

• Serial number of the application in which the petition was filed
• Filing date of the petition
• Regulation under which the petition was filed, if known (e.g. 37 CFR 1.137(b), 37 CFR 1.183, etc.)

3. Only the information described in paragraph 2 should be provided in the e-mail. No attachments may be added to the e-mail and other information will not be considered. The email will not be acknowledged or answered.

4. This e-mail alert will NOT be considered a communication in the file under 37 CFR 1.4(a)(2) and will not be entered into the file contents. The alert is NOT considered a status inquiry.

5. A single e-mail alert may include information on more than one unanswered petition. However, do not send in more than one alert per unanswered petition.

Example [e-mail addressed to petitions@uspto.gov]:

The following petitions have not been answered to date:

Application No. Petition Filed: Reg:
10/111111 October 3, 2003 37 CFR 1.137(b)
10/222222 December 5, 2003 37 CFR 1.183

For more on the latest USPTO procedures contact the author of this "APLF Update," Bill Heinze (bill.heinze@tkhr.com), at Thomas, Kayden, Horstemeyer & Risley LLP in Atlanta, Georgia USA and via the new "I/P Updates" news service at http://billheinze.blogspot.com (RSS/Atom feeds).