Back in May, the USPTO issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking to
switch from the Broadest Reasonable Interpretation (BRI) standard
to a Phillips claim construction for AIA Trial
Proceedings (here). Thereafter the agency collected
comments from the public, most of which favored the change, and
submitted the issue to the Office of Management & Budget (OMB)
for final regulatory approval. On Wednesday October 3rd the regulatory approval was given by OMB's
Office of Information & Regulatory Affairs (OIRA). Thus,
the USPTO may now publish a Final Rule Package to make the proposed
switch to Phillips.
The Final Rule Package, which I expect will publish in the
Federal Register next week does not take effect immediately.
Rather, there will be an effective date 30-60 days after the date
of publishing. Assuming publication next week, that would provide
an effective date as early as the first full week of November, or
as late as December. (There have been discussions that this
