Final Rule Package Expected in Fall
For those patent professionals living under a rock the past few months, the USPTO issued a notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) back in May that seeks to add a new stipulation requirement for terminal disclaimers filed to overcome non-statutory double patenting (here). Under the proposal, to overcome an obviousness-type double patenting rejection, the Applicant would need to stipulate that the entire patent subject to the terminal disclaimer will be enforceable only to the extent that the conflicting claims of the reference patent remain valid and enforceable. In other words, if conflicting claims of a reference patent fail, so too would all claims of the subject patent, including any patentably distinct claims.
The NPRM comment period closed yesterday and hundreds of public comments have been collected (here). Now what?Continue Reading Public Comment Period on Controversial Terminal Disclaimer Proposal Now Closed