MPEP Section 2664, Mailing of Office Action

Executive summary:

This document contains Section 2664 ("Mailing of Office Action") of the Manual of Patent Examining Procedure (the "M.P.E.P."), Eighth Edition, Eighth Revision (July 2010). This page was last updated in January 2011. You may return to the section index to find a particular section. Alternatively, you may search the MPEP using the search box that appears on the left side of every page of BitLaw--you may restrict your search to the MPEP on the search results page.

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2664 Mailing of Office Action [R-7]

After an Office action is completed and processed and has been approved by the **>Central Reexamination Unit (CRU) Supervisory Patent Examiner (SPE) or Technology Center (TC) Quality Assurance Specialist (QAS)< and the Reexamination Legal Advisor (RLA), the action is mailed by the **>CRU< support staff. In conjunction with mailing, any appropriate processing (e.g., PALM work, update scanning) is carried out.

Inter partes reexamination forms are structured so that the PALM printer can be used to print the identifying information for the reexamination file and the mailing address (usually the address of the patent owner's attorney or agent of record). Where there is no attorney or agent of record, the patent owner's address is printed. Only the first owner's address is printed where there are multiple partial owners; a transmittal form PTOL-2070 is also provided for each partial owner in addition to the one named on the top of the Office action.

All actions in an inter partes reexamination proceeding will have a copy mailed to the third party requester. A transmittal form PTOL-2070 must be used in providing the third party requester with a copy of each Office action.

A completed transmittal form PTOL-2070 will be provided for each requester (there can be multiple requesters in a merged reexamination proceeding; see MPEP § 2686.01) and each additional partial owner as discussed above, and the appropriate address will be entered on the transmittal form(s). The number of transmittal forms provides a ready reference for the number of copies of each Office action to be made, and the transmittal form permits use of the window envelopes in mailing the copies of the action to parties other than the patent owner.