Art Cited by Foreign Patent Office

As is well known, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (hereinafter USPTO) requires any applicants for a U.S. patent to comply with the provisions of 37 CFR 1.56 relating to the disclosure of relevant facts which may impact the patentablity of the application. Briefly, under these rules, applicants have a duty to disclose to the USPTO information material to the patentability of the application. This duty may be satisfied by the submission of an Information Disclosure Statement (hereinafter IDS) to the USPTO which meets the requirements of 37 CFR 1.98.

For the typical U.S. applicant, this duty may not be that difficult. He is probably aware of several U.S. patents which relate to the subject matter of his invention and can be listed on an IDS.–click here to read more—