Filing US Patent Applications—The Application Data Sheet
December 3, 2010As a practice pointer, if you are planning to file a patent application in United States either from an individual country or under the PCT (or even directly as the priority case), the information that your US associate will (1) need eventually and (2) find helpful immediately, can be located on a US Patent Office (“USPTO”) form known as an Application Data Sheet.
The Application Data Sheet is designed by the USPTO to provide the relevant inventorship, assignee, and related information associated with the new patent application. As a “best practice” in the United States, an Application Data Sheet is typically filed with all new applications.
If you are a practitioner outside of the United States, you can easily access the Application Data Sheet at the USPTO website (www.uspto.gov) and in particular at this link (http://www.uspto.gov/forms/sb0014_fill.pdf). If you can provide your US associate with all of the information requested in the Application Data Sheet, you will enhance the initial filing of the application, smooth the prosecution, and reduce or eliminate follow on charges that are often required to provide the information after the application has been filed.
