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Miscelaneous IP Nuggets #4

A few items of interest to the IP community.

1. As everyone knows by now… the federal government (and the US Patent and Trademark Office) did not shut down. Everyone is breathing a sigh of relief. And the cherry blossom festival went on as planned.

 2. As reported in today’s Patently-O blog, appropriation for the Patent Office until the end of the fiscal year (September 30,2011) will be cut by $100 million. According to an internal memo from Director Kappos, overtime will not be allowed for examiners and a hiring freeze will be put in place. Moreover, the Detroit Patent Office satellite office is indefinitely postponed.

3. There is some interesting commentary (from the examiner point of view) over on the Just-n-Examiner blog about the Clearing the Oldest Patent Applications (COPA) program which has as its goal that all applications filed before June 7, 2009 be given a first action before end of the fiscal year. The main concern voiced is in regard to some of the applications being examined by examiners in unrelated art groups to reduce the backlog.