0031 Justification for Change

ATTACHMENT TO CHANGE WORKSHEET FOR 0651-0031
OTHER CHANGE

Due to program changes, feedback based on the public comments received in response
to the Notice of Proposed Rulemakings entitled Changes to Practice for the
Examination of Claims in Patent Applications (RIN 0651-AB94) and Proposed Changes
to Practice for Continuing Applications, Requests for Continued Examination Practice,
and Applications Containing Patentably Indistinct Claims (RIN 0651-AB93), and further
study, the USPTO is revising its estimates for the examination support document, and
petitions for further continued examination. For the examination support documents,
the UPSTO now estimated that there will 10,000 received annually, with 24 hour
estimated burden at a rate of $218, which is a weighed average of 16 hours of attorney
time and 8 hours of a searching professional time. In the final rule, the USPTO is
revising the rules to change the criteria of when an examination support document is
required to be filed. Accordingly, the USPTO now estimates an increased number of
these examination support documents may be filed. The USPTO now estimates the
examination support documents will take 24 hours based upon further feedback from
the public and further study. Likewise, for the petitions for further continued
examination (whether via continuations, continuations-in-part, or requests for continued
examination), the USPTO now estimates that fewer such petitions will be filed because
the final rule will change the conditions for when such petitions are required. The
USPTO now estimates such petitions will take 4 hours based upon further feedback
from the public and further study.
The USPTO estimates that there will be an increase in the annual burden for this
submission of 196,800 burden hours as a program change, bringing the total annual
hours to 3,724,791. The USPTO also estimates that the annual (non-hour) cost burden
will decrease by $2,880,039 as a program change, bringing the total annual (non-hour)
cost burden to $114,723,256.