On September 16, 2012 certain provisions of the America Invents
Act (AIA) went into effect. Below is an overview of several notable
provisions effective on September 16, 2012.
Preissuance Submissions
Preissuance submissions allow a third party, anonymously or
otherwise, to submit relevant art to the United States Patent and
Trademark Office during examination of a patent application. Each
preissuance submission must be submitted within a statutorily
defined period and include: a list of patents, published patent
applications or other printed publications being submitted; a
concise description of the relevancy of the submitted documents;
and a fee.
The USPTO determines the sufficiency of the concise description
on a case-by-case basis. A brief narrative or simple statement
would be acceptable. However, a bare statement that "the art
is relevant" would be unacceptable. A submission must be filed
before the mailing date of a Notice of Allowance; or the later of
1)
