Patent Office Agenda Pitches Foreign Representative Registration

The US Patent and Trademark Office plans to require foreign patent applicants and owners to use agency-sanctioned representatives, according to the Trump administration’s regulatory agenda update released Friday.

Absent from the list of planned proposals and final rules is action to codify the PTO’s revived practice of discretionary denials of patent validity challenges, which several petitioners have argued violates the federal law governing agency rulemaking. Originally adopted through precedential opinions at the Patent Trial and Appeal Board, which hears such challenges, the process was scaled back significantly during the Biden administration before being reinstated and expanded by acting Director Coke ...