Every year has its “it” term.
In 2025, the crown belonged to AI, and rightfully so. AI dominated the headlines, flooded the USPTO’s dockets, and triggered more §101 rejections than any examiner would care to admit. If you worked in tech, you had to talk about AI. If you worked in patent law, you likely
Another day and another change at the USPTO. On October 8, the USPTO announced an Artificial Intelligence Pilot Program for pre-examination searches. Last week, on October 24, the USPTO followed with the Streamlined Claim Set Pilot Program aimed at accelerating examination through simplified claim structures. Together, these initiatives reflect Director John Squires’ drive to modernize
The USPTO just changed how interviews between a USPTO patent examiner and a patent applicant are treated. On October 2, USPTO management revised the examiner Performance Appraisal Plan (PAP) for FY 2026, capping compensation for interviews at one hour per round of prosecution.
Previously, examiners earned an hour of credit for each interview, with no
Beginning May 13, 2025, the window between paying the issue fee and your patent officially issuing will become much shorter.
Until now, after paying the issue fee, applicants typically had a comfortable three weeks (sometimes longer) to file a continuation or divisional application. It was not an enormous amount of time, but it was usually
Pat Muffo, Partner in Seyfarth’s Intellectual Property practice presented the “AI for Patent Attorneys: Opportunities and Challenges” session as part of myLawCLE’s “AI for Lawyers: A practical guide to generative AI, copyright, privacy, and more” webinar series. The webinar session is available on demand on Thursday, August 31, 2023 through the myLawCLE website.
Artificial intelligence