The United States Patent and Trademark
Office (USPTO or Office) is submitting this request in support of
the Final Rule titled Setting and Adjusting Patent Fees (RIN
0651-AC54). The USPTO is setting or adjusting patent fees as
authorized by the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act (Act or AIA)
Pub.L.112-29. The revised fees will provide the Office with a
sufficient amount of aggregate revenue to recover its aggregate
cost of patent operations and will help the Office implement a
sustainable funding model, reduce the current patent application
backlog, decrease patent pendency, improve patent quality, and
upgrade the Office's patent business information technology (IT)
capability and infrastructure. The Office also introduced reduced
fees for a new class of patent applicants, micro entities, under
section 10(g) of the Act and included multipart and staged fees for
requests for continued examination (RCEs), appeals, and some of the
newly created AIA administrative trial services. The revised fee
schedule will foster innovation and increase application processing
options. Under section 10(b) of the AIA, eligible small entities
shall receive a 50 percent fee reduction from the large entity fees
for filing, searching, examining, issuing, appealing, and
maintaining patent applications and patents. The Act further
provides that micro entities shall receive a 75 percent fee
reduction for filing, searching, examining, issuing, appealing, and
maintaining patent applications and patents. This information
collection request is submitted as a fee-based burden collection to
best provide data for the fee adjustment burden impact of the final
rule. The USPTO will maintain the information requirements and
non-fee burden for the information collection items within the
separate collections in which these items were previously submitted
to OMB and approved. This new collection will be maintained for fee
burden adjustments only. The relevant fee burdens will be removed
from their existing collections through non-substantive change
requests to discontinue counting those burdens twice and
overstating the total respondent burden in the USPTO inventory.
This information collection request includes: + Correct
Inventorship After First Office Action on the Merits. This is an
item introduced in this rulemaking. The information collection
requirements for this item will eventually be moved into 0651-0031
Patent Processing (Updating), and the fee will remain in this
collection. + Petitions to the Chief Administrative Patent Judge
Under 37 CFR 41.3. This is an item that is not covered by an
existing information collection request and is added to this
submission because the fee is affected by this rulemaking. The
information requirements for this item will eventually be moved
into 0651-0063 Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences (BPAI)
Actions, and the fee will remain in this collection. + Fee
adjustments to existing and pending items in the agency inventory.
Information requirements for those items will remain in their
respective collections and only the corresponding fees (as adjusted
by the final rule) are submitted for this collection. + Response
adjustments to existing and pending items in the agency inventory
projected to be impacted by the fee adjustments because changes in
some fees are expected to change demand for those services, which
changes the number of responses. Information requirements for those
items will remain in their respective collections and only the
corresponding fees are submitted for this collection. The response
adjustments are offered here solely for the purpose of capturing
the total impact on burden due to the final rule.
This information collection
request (ICR) includes program changes that are part of the impact
of the rulemaking (new statute). In addition to the new information
requirement introduced by this rulemaking--Correct Inventorship
After First Office Action on the Merits--these changes include
revised fee amounts and fee structures that will have an impact on
annual cost burden as well as on the estimated responses for the
associated information requirements whose fees are affected by this
ICR. This ICR also includes program changes that are not part of
the impact of the rulemaking. These changes are primarily from the
movement of the affected fees and their associated responses (as
estimated and approved in previous ICRs) into this new information
collection, as well as the addition of an existing information
requirement, Petition to the Chief Administrative Patent Judge
Under 37 CFR 41.3, that is not covered by a current information
collection. Please consult sections 1, 12, 13, and 15 of the
Supporting Statement for further explanation of these changes.
On behalf of this Federal agency, I certify that
the collection of information encompassed by this request complies
with 5 CFR 1320.9 and the related provisions of 5 CFR
1320.8(b)(3).
The following is a summary of the topics, regarding
the proposed collection of information, that the certification
covers:
(i) Why the information is being collected;
(ii) Use of information;
(iii) Burden estimate;
(iv) Nature of response (voluntary, required for a
benefit, or mandatory);
(v) Nature and extent of confidentiality; and
(vi) Need to display currently valid OMB control
number;
If you are unable to certify compliance with any of
these provisions, identify the item by leaving the box unchecked
and explain the reason in the Supporting Statement.