35 USC Chapter 31 - OPTIONAL INTER PARTES REEXAMINATION PROCEDURES | Title 35 - Patents | U.S. Code

USCPrelim is a preliminary release and may be subject to further revision before it is released again as a final version.

Current through Pub. L. 112-283. (See Public Laws for the current Congress.)

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Sec. 311. Request for inter partes reexamination. 312. Determination of issue by Director. 313. Inter partes reexamination order by Director. 314. Conduct of inter partes reexamination proceedings. 315. Appeal. 316. Certificate of patentability, unpatentability, and claim cancellation. 317. Inter partes reexamination prohibited. 318. Stay of litigation.

Amendment of Chapter Heading and Analysis

Pub. L. 112–29, § 6(a), (c)(2),Sept. 16, 2011, 125 Stat. 299, 304, provided that, effective upon the expiration of the 1-year period beginning on Sept. 16, 2011, and applicable to any patent issued before, on, or after that effective date, with provisions for graduated implementation, this chapter heading and analysis are amended generally, substituting “INTER PARTES REVIEW” for existing chapter heading, substituting item 311 “Inter partes review.”, item 312 “Petitions.”, item 313 “Preliminary response to petition.”, item 314 “Institution of inter partes review.”, item 315 “Relation to other proceedings or actions.”, item 316 “Conduct of inter partes review.”, item 317 “Settlement.”, and item 318 “Decision of the Board.” for existing items 311 to 318, respectively, and adding item 319 “Appeal.” See 2011 Amendment note below.

Amendments

2011—Pub. L. 112–29, § 6(a),Sept. 16, 2011, 125 Stat. 299, substituted “INTER PARTES REVIEW” for “OPTIONAL INTER PARTES REEXAMINATION PROCEDURES” in chapter heading and amended analysis generally, adding items 311 to 319, and striking out former items 311 “Request for inter partes reexamination”, 312 “Determination of issue by Director”, 313 “Inter partes reexamination order by Director”, 314 “Conduct of inter partes reexamination proceedings”, 315 “Appeal”, 316 “Certificate of patentability, unpatentability, and claim cancellation”, 317 “Inter partes reexamination prohibited”, and 318 “Stay of litigation”.

2002—Pub. L. 107–273, div. C, title III, § 13202(c)(1),Nov. 2, 2002, 116 Stat. 1902, made technical correction to directory language of Pub. L. 106–113, div. B, § 1000(a)(9) [title IV, § 4604(a)], Nov. 29, 1999, 113 Stat. 1536, 1501A–567, which enacted this chapter.

The table below lists the classification updates, since Jan. 3, 2012, for the contained sections. If there are multiple sections, they are presented in section number order (original document order).

The most recent Classification Table update that we have noticed was Wednesday, February 6, 2013

An empty table indicates that we see no relevant changes listed in the classification tables. If you suspect that our system may be missing something, please double-check with the Office of the Law Revision Counsel.

How To Use

Multiple entries for a section are listed most recent first, within the section.

The Session Year indicates which session of Congress was responsible for the changes classified. The Congress number forms the first part of the Public Law number; each Congress has two sessions.

Abbreviations used in the Description of Change column:

An empty field implies a standard amendment.
"new" means a new section or new note, or all new text of an existing section or note.
"nt" means note.
"nt [tbl]" means note [table].
"prec" means preceding.
"fr" means a transfer from another section.
"to" means a transfer to another section.
"omitted" means the section is omitted.
"repealed" means the section is repealed.
"nt ed change" and "ed change" - See the Editorial Classification Change Table [pdf].

The Public Law field is linked to the development of the law in the Thomas system at the Library of Congress.

The Statutes at Large field is linked to the text of the law, in the context of its volume of the Statutes at Large, at the Government Printing Office. Please note that it takes a while for these pages to get posted, so for very recent legislation, you need to look at the "enrolled" version at the Thomas site.

The Statutes at Large references have been rendered in the format used as page numbers in the Public Law web pages to which we link, to facilitate copy-paste into browser "find on this (web) page" tools. We are still working on a more direct link facility.

For serious comparison work, we suggest copying all or a portion of the Public Law text into your favorite text editor, for convenient content traversal and window control.

Sections with change type "new" are a special case, still under development. All are now listed, at the title level only.

You will find that occassionally a specific update you notice in a Public Law listed in a classification table will already have made it into the Code. We assume this is an artifact of the LRC edit process. The LII does not edit the LRC content.

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General Reference

Refer to the LRC (Law Revision Council) for explanations about the US Code from the folks who put it all together.

You can look for information about what it is and is not, which titles are positive law, the schedule of Supplements, etc. Under download you can find the source data we use here (GPO locator files), as well as, PDF files that look just like the paper books (these may be rather large).

Refer to the Thomas site for changes that have not yet made it into the classification tables.

35 USC	Description of Change	Session Year	Public Law	Statutes at Large
§ 311		2012	112-274 [Sec.] 1(d)(2)	126 Stat. 2456
§ 311	nt new	2012	112-274 [Sec.] 1(d)(1)	126 Stat. 2456

35 USC Chapter 31 - OPTIONAL INTER PARTES REEXAMINATION PROCEDURES

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