I began the year with an article about USPTO’s website survey and finished the post with this:
Given that, in my opinion, the user experience on USPTO’s website is pretty good, I can only hope that they get to other pressing matters in the patent system as soon as possible.
Well, my wish came true as USPTO revealed a website for discussing the MPEP (Manual of Patent Examining Procedure). Every examiner (and actually, every patent attorney or agent) has to practically know this manual by heart. The fact that anyone can partake in its improvement with good ideas, I believe it is a step forward, specially in the transparency department. There are some common sense rules:
- To ensure a productive discussion, those who elect to participate agree to post only ideas or comments directly related to the MPEP and its contents.
- Those who elect to participate agree to conduct themselves in a civil manner. This includes refraining from submitting obscene or threatening language; discriminatory language (including hate speech) based on race, national origin, age, gender, sexual orientation, religion, or disability; sexually explicit material; and other material that would violate the law if published here.
- Those who elect to participate agree to refrain from submitting ideas or comments that promote services or products (not including non-commercial links that are relevant to this Web site); and to refrain from including private phone numbers, email addresses, or postal addresses or embedding other media (not including hyperlinks to other media).
USPTO encourages everyone to spread the word (tweet, email, blog post), so here is my contribution.
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