By Donald Zuhn --
On Wednesday, U.S. Patent and Trademark Office Director David Kappos announced that the USPTO was instituting a Patent Examiner Technical Training Program (PETTP) that would formalize the process by which the Office seeks public assistance in providing technical training to patent examiners. The new program is intended to provide scientists and experts as lecturers to patent examiners in order to update them on technical developments, the state of the art, emerging trends, maturing technologies, and recent innovations in their fields.
While previous examiner training programs focused on specific technical areas, the new program creates a corps-wide effort open to all technology areas in all Technology Centers. Among the technical areas for which the Office is seeking participants are: biotechnology and organic chemistry; chemical and materials engineering; computer architecture and software; networking, multiplexing, cable and security; communications technologies; semiconductors, electrical and optical systems and components; transportation, construction, electronic commerce, agriculture, national security and license & review; and mechanical engineering, manufacturing and products. With respect to Technology Center 1600 (biotechnology and organic chemistry), the Office believes training on the following technical areas would be most beneficial: formulation chemistry; controlling drug release; drug targeting/conjugation and dosage form technology; drug delivery; nanotechnology (delivery of nucleic acids, antibodies, other molecules); statistical methods in validation of microarry data; personalized medicine, manufacture of carbon nanospheres, pharmaceutical/clinical chemistry for organic compounds, current animal models (emphasis on how they are being generated and used), advances in gene therapy, current methods in drug discovery (identifying current methods for the isolation and testing of natural products, and strategy for the modification of the isolated products into more potent/useful compounds).
The PETTP webpage points out that the new program is not intended as an opportunity for applicants to discuss pending applications or to circumvent normal communication between applicants or applicants' representatives and examiners or Supervisory Patent Examiners. In addition, PETTP participants are not to provide advice or recommendations to the USPTO. Standard operating procedures for PETTP participants can be found here.
Director Kappos noted that the new program "is intended to provide patent examiners with access to scientists and experts who are willing to share their expertise on prior art and industry standards." He added that "this kind of training provides a great opportunity to enhance the quality of our patent examination."
PETTP guest lecturers must have relevant technical knowledge, as well as familiarity with prior art and industry practices/standards in areas of technologies where such lectures would be beneficial. Those interested in participating in the PETTP can fill in and submit an online form or send an email to [email protected] providing their name, phone number, and identifying their area of technical assistance. Additional information regarding the program can be found on the PETTP webpage and in a notice published in yesterday's Federal Register (75 Fed. Reg. 56059).
This program seems like a no-brainer, and I'm almost surprised that this has not been done before. Nevertheless, it's impressive to see that, once again, David Kappos has the initiative and wherewithal to implement a measure that seems obvious but had not been undertaken before. Kudos.
http://www.generalpatent.com/media/videos/general-patent-gets-results-its-clients
Posted by: patent litigation | September 20, 2010 at 03:35 PM