By: Darren Crew

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (U.S. PTO) has announced that two new groups of rule changes are expected to be published soon. It has been reported that the rule changes will probably become effective at least 60 days after publication, and probably no earlier than October 1, 2007.

CLAIMS:

One of the two new groups of rule changes pertains to claims. The rule changes on claims relate to proposed rules on claims which were originally listed in 2006, and included several changes desired by the U.S. PTO, such as the following. If an application contains more than 10 independent claims, the applicant should be required to provide a patentability report and other additional documents. When an application contains less than 10 independent claims, only the independent claims, and the dependent claims expressly elected by the applicant, should be initially examined. The U.S. PTO indicated that this rule should be retroactive. However, the complete details of the rule changes relating to claims have not yet been disclosed.–click here to read more—