The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has published four notices of proposed rulemaking implementing provisions of the patent reform law signed last year. The issuance of the rules, which came ahead of schedule, opens a 60-day comment period on the draft rules.
According to USPTO, the notices published in the Federal Register “propose rules concerning inventor oaths and declarations, as well as for third party submissions of prior art in a patent application and for third party citations of prior art in a patent file. The USPTO also published proposed rules related to the statute of limitations under which registered practitioners may be disciplined for misconduct before the Office.”
More rules are on the way later this month, the office said, including proposed rules for “supplemental examination, inter partes review, post-grant review, the transitional program for covered business methods, and derivation.”
The new proposed rules are available here.