Publications

The United States Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO) released a report on June 3, 2002 entitled “The 21st Century Strategic Plan.” The 388-page Plan outlines the USPTO’s major goals and initiatives for the next five to ten years. The full text is available on the USPTO’s web site. This Advisory summarizes the key points of that Plan. We note at the outset that the USPTO can not automatically initiate this Plan. Several of the specific proposals in the Plan would require amendments to the Patent Act by Congress, changes in the USPTO’s Rules, and/or allocation of funds in the federal budget – none of which has yet been secured. In view of the political considerations involved, we expect that the USPTO will implement few of the proposed changes exactly as they appear in the Plan today. Rather, we expect the Plan to be a starting point for negotiating changes. Trade groups such as the American Intellectual Property Law Association (AIPLA), the Intellectual Property Owners Association (IPO), American Bar Association (ABA) and the International Trademark Association (INTA) have already begun to comment on the Strategic Plan; selected commentaries from those groups are summarized in this Advisory. Future Advisories will keep you apprised of important changes in this Plan.