The USPTO is considering whether to expand its tri-lateral (US, EPO, Japan) document sharing procedures to permit examiners to import published documents donor offices into the application file of the recipient office.
For example, a USPTO examiner could import a reference cited as prior art in the file of a published foreign application into the USPTO file.
These imported files would become part of the official prosecution history. The PTO would, for now, restrict importation to (i) filed application; (ii) listing of cited references; (iii) available reference copies; and (iv) search reports without examiner comments.
Comments should be directed to Mark Powell (mark.powell@uspto.gov) and Jay Lucas (jay.lucas@uspto.gov). You may also leave your comments below.
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