By
Donald Zuhn --
In
a Federal Register notice published on Wednesday (74 Fed. Reg. 54028), the U.S. Patent and Trademark
Office announced that it plans to hold a roundtable discussion to "obtain
input from diverse sources in the patent community and/or the public sector to
evaluate views on work sharing."
The roundtable discussion is scheduled for 8:30 am to 1:00 pm (EST) on Wednesday,
November 18, 2009 at the USPTO, Madison Auditorium, Concourse Level, Madison
Building, 600 Dulany Street, Alexandria, Virginia.
While
the roundtable will be open to the public (and made available via webcast), the
Office will be inviting a limited number of roundtable participants from patent
user groups, practitioners, industry, independent inventor organizations,
academia, and Government, as well as selecting a few "at-large"
participants based upon requests to Wednesday's notice. Anyone interested in participating in
the roundtable must send a request to the USPTO by e-mail to [email protected]. The request must include the following: (1) name of participant and contact
information (phone number and e-mail address); and (2) the organization the
participant represents. The
deadline for submitting requests to participate in the roundtable is 5 pm (EST)
on November 4, 2009.
The
Office will also be accepting written comments on issues raised at the
roundtable or on any issue pertaining to worksharing. Written comments should be submitted by e-mail to IP.Policy@uspto/gov, or by mail to Mail
Stop OIPPE, United States Patent and Trademark Office, P.O. Box 1450,
Alexandria, VA 22313–1450, ATTN: Elizabeth Shaw. The deadline for submitting written comments is December 11,
2009.
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