The USPTO announced today a new program called the Access to Relevant Prior Art Initiative.
According to the USPTO, “this initiative is envisioned to
potentially reduce the burden on applicants with complying with the
duty of disclosure.” Under this program, the USPTO will
use “electronic resources to provide examiners with
information (e.g. prior art, search reports, etc,) from
applicant’s other applications as early as possible to
increase patent examination quality and efficiency. These other
applications could have the same or substantially the same
disclosure (e.g., domestic parent and counterpart foreign
applications) as the U.S. application being examined.”
Phase 1 of the program, limited to certain art units and to
references from immediate U.S. parent applications, will start
November 1, 2018 . For applications that fall under the new
initiative, applicants will receive a “Notice of Imported
Citations” reporting the application’s inclusion in
