Before the USPTO was subject to a hiring freeze, it assumed it would onboard 400 new examiners between fiscal year 2025 and fiscal year 2026, and still predicted an increase in the backlog of unexamined patent applications....more
Although Inter Partes Review (IPR) is limited to grounds of unpatentability based upon prior art references, it is nevertheless possible to raise issues of written description or enablement by applying intervening prior art...more