Proposed IDS rules challenged before Office of Management and BudgetOctober 18, 2007

Apparently the USPTO's recent forays into rulemaking are not winning friends and influencing people. The rules limiting claims and continuation applications are currently being challenged in court, and now a group of companies is challenging the proposed IDS rules before the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). The rules were submitted to the OMB back on July 27; you can read the submission challenging them here.

The text of the draft rules is available here: text, pdf, but it's unknown how the final rules may be substantively different from the draft rules. The submission filed yesterday apparently assumes there are no substantive changes.

Assuming that is correct, the new rules would be quite onerous. For example, an applicant would have to provide an ESD-like statement regarding any prior art submission that is more than 25 pages long, and about all prior art submitted if more than 20 documents are submitted in an application. This is keeping with the "make applicants do as much work as possible" philosophy currently plaguing USPTO management.

A similar challenge was filed against the claim and continuation limit rules when they were under review by the OMB, but those rules were issued anyway. So, don't be too optimistic that the rules won't be published as final regulations sometime soon. Maybe we'll see another lawsuit filed regarding these rules once they are implemented.

Hat tip: Peter Zura's 271 blog for noting the issue and providing a copy of the submission to OMB.

← Return to Filewrapper

Stay in Touch

Receive the latest news and updates from us and our attorneys.

Sign Up