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policies and practices. However, once USPTO decides to propose new regulations, it is

obligated to abide by established administrative law procedures.

II.

USPTO’s Proposed Retroactive Application of the Rules Exceeds Legal Bounds

Senior officials have publicly stated that USPTO intends to give the rules retroactive

effect.

In particular, the new rules would apply to all applications that are pending under the old

rules but not yet examined as of the effective date of the new rules. This violates the law in three

separate ways.

First, new provisions cannot be “submarined” past the requirements for Notice and

and

Comment.

Second, retroactivity violates limits on USPTO’s authority. The Supreme Court

explained the limits on agencies’ authority to promulgate retroactive rules in Bowen v

Georgetown University Hospital, 488 U.S. 204, 209, 220 (1988), as follows:

Retroactivity is not favored in the law. Thus, congressional enactments and

administrative rules will not be construed to have retroactive effect unless their language

requires this result. ... By the same principle, a statutory grant of legislative rulemaking

authority will not, as a general matter, be understood to encompass the power to

promulgate retroactive rules unless that power is conveyed by Congress in express terms.

... “The power to require readjustments for the past is drastic. It ... ought not to be

extended so as to permit unreasonably harsh action without very plain words”. Even

where some substantial justification for retroactive rulemaking is presented, courts should

be reluctant to find such authority absent an express statutory grant.

A rule that has unreasonable secondary retroactivity – for example, altering

future regulation in a manner that makes worthless substantial past investment incurred in

reliance upon the prior rule – may for that reason be “arbitrary” or “capricious,” see 5

U.S.C. § 706, and thus invalid.

Bowen makes clear that retroactivity is measured with respect to the activities of the regulated

party and its “past investment incurred in reliance upon the prior rule,” not with respect to

agency action. USPTO’s examination schedule is irrelevant.

John Whealan, Duke University Law School, Fifth Annual Hot Topics in Intellectual Property

Law Symposium, http://realserver.law.duke.edu/ramgen/spring06/students/02172006a.rm (Feb. 17,

2006), at time mark 1:01:50, describing how USPTO will apply the rules retroactively to applications

filed before the rules’ effective date.

Air Transport Ass’n v. Federal Aviation Admin., 169 F.3d 1, 7-8 (D.C. Cir. 1999) (rule invalid

where it departs unpredictably from the Notice’s proposed rule).

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Third, there is no delegation of retroactive rulemaking authority in the statute. Even if

the Office successfully defended a “substantial justification” within its jurisdiction (an unlikely

ely

possibility) – it has no authority to rely on that justification without authority from Congress.

III.

USPTO Concedes that the Rules are “Substantive” and Therefore Beyond its

Authority

USPTO has procedural but not substantive rulemaking authority.

But the cornerstone

proposals of both rules are substantive, and therefore likely to be ruled beyond USPTO’s

authority when challenged. The NPRMs readily concede that the new rules are intended to

“affect substantive rights or interests,” and “encode the agency’s substantive value judgment,”

nt,”

two of the major tests

used to determine whether a rule is procedural or substantive. After the

NPRMs were published, in the early Town Hall presentations in February 2006, USPTO officials

quite openly expressed the view that both the Continuations Rule and Limits on Claims Rule

were being proposed for a substantive purpose reflecting USPTO’s policy judgment, and that

USPTO intended to substantively alter the delicate balance of rights that Congress created.

IV.

The Rules Shift Burdens of Proof, and are Therefore Substantive

The Supreme Court has noted that shifts in burdens of proof are “substantive.”

”

Under

federal patent law, USPTO always has the burden of proof whenever it rejects a patent

USPTO does “NOT … have authority to issue substantive rules,” 35 U.S.C. § 2(b)(2)(A)72;

72;

Merck & Co. v. Kessler, 80 F.3d 1543, 1550, 38 USPQ2d 1347, 1351 (Fed. Cir. 1996) (emphasis in

Merck). The full text of § 2 is set forth in Attachment O – note that USPTO has no responsibility to

y to

regulate, adjudicate, or gain competence in any aspect of the post-issuance economic lifetime of a patent,

except for the very narrow scope of issues reviewable by reissue and reexamination.

E.g., JEM Broadcasting Co. v. Federal Communications Comm’n, 22 F.3d 320, 328 (D.C. Cir.

Cir.

1994) (a rule is ineligible for procedural classification “where the agency ‘encodes a substantive value

alue

judgment’” in the rule).

John Whealan, Duke University Law School, Fifth Annual Hot Topics in Intellectual Property

Law Symposium, http://realserver.law.duke.edu/ramgen/spring06/students/02172006a.rm (Feb. 17,

2006), at time mark 58:26, discussed reasons that USPTO would not permit continuations. He stated that

he would introduce an “intent” element, and substantially rebalance substantive rights, in derogation of

the law as stated by the courts, for example, in Kingsdown Medical Consultants Ltd v. Hollister Inc., 863

F.2d 867, 874, 9 USPQ2d 1384, 1390 (Fed. Cir. 1988). Mr. Whealan conceded that USPTO may well be

acting illegally. Id. at time mark 52:10.

Director, Office of Workers’ Compensation Programs, Dept of Labor v. Greenwich Collieries,

512 U.S. 267, 271 (1994) (“[T]he assignment of the burden of proof is a rule of substantive law.”).

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application, for any reason.

Both rules would shift burdens of proof, and are therefore

“substantive” and outside the Office’s authority.

ty.

The Continuations Rule proposes to shift the burden of proof on the issue of the right to

file a continuation from USPTO

to applicants.

Most egregiously, USPTO’s “Town Hall”

”

slides specifically state that USPTO would deny permission to file a continuation application

when the underlying problem is USPTO’s own lack of diligence or violation of its own guidance

documents.

Similarly, the Limits on Claims Rule proposes to shift the burden of proof for

patentability over prior art from USPTO to the applicant in certain circumstances. It would

require the applicant to perform a search and examine all claims against all documents submitted

to the Office (for potentially dozens of documents that are of only secondary relevance). It would

permit the Office to disallow claims until an applicant does so and it would allow the Office to

automatically reject claims that it has not examined. Finally, both rules would shift the burden of

proof on the issue of “double patenting.”

”

Each of these shifts of burden of proof are substantive, and therefore not a valid exercise

of USPTO’s authority to issue regulations governing application and examination procedure.

In re Oetiker, 977 F.2d 1443, 1445-46, 24 USPQ2d 13443, 1444 (Fed. Cir. 1992) (“the

examiner bears the initial burden, on review of the prior art or on any other ground, of presenting a prima

facie case of unpatentability. … If examination at the initial stage does not produce a prima facie case of

unpatentability, then without more the applicant is entitled to grant of the patent” [emphasis added]); In re

Haas, 580 F.2d 461, 198 USPQ 334 (CCPA 1978) (refusal to examine is legally the same as a rejection).

35 U.S.C. § 120 (a continuation “shall have the same effect” as an original application); 35

; 35

U.S.C. § 131 (Director of USPTO “shall cause an examination to be made of the application,” not such

uch

applications as the Director picks and chooses, or some designated part of the application); In re Bogese,

303 F.3d 1362, 1368-69, 64 USPQ2d 1448, 1453 (Fed. Cir. 2002) (USPTO may refuse further

rther

examination of an application only after satisfying fairly strict prerequisites, including notice).

The applicant must “show[] to the satisfaction of the Director that the amendment, argument,

or evidence could not have been submitted during the prosecution of the prior-filed application” or “prior

prior

to the close of prosecution in the application.”71 Fed. Reg. 59, col. 3, and 61, col. 2.

See Attachment N, slides 82 and 83 of the Chicago Town Hall slides (Continuation will not be

ot be

permitted in cases where examiner’s work violated USPTO’s guidance documents, or was otherwise

inadequate or incomplete, even when so inadequate as to constitute “premature final rejection”).

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Attachment F

Existing Regulations or Administrative Practices Created or

Contributed to the Problems USPTO Seeks to Remedy

USPTO has disclosed no analysis of the extent to which its existing regulations or

administrative practices have created or contributed to the problems it seeks to remedy, as

required by Sec. 1(b)(2).

USPTO has disclosed no analysis of alternatives to direct regulation,

including most notably “providing economic incentives to encourage the desired behavior” (Sec.

1(b)(3)).

In this case, it is not regulated parties who would benefit from economic incentives;

;

patent examination is a user fee-funded government service. Instead, it is USPTO patent

atent

examiners who need economic incentives that more closely align their rewards to the social

value of the applications they are reviewing. If USPTO’s internal inefficiencies were addressed,

the backlog problem for which these rules are said to be the solution would be greatly reduced.

Both proposed rules appear to assume that every application can and should be shaped at

filing to fit a “standard box” corresponding to a standard quantum of examination work. In

Section I, we describe that “standard box,” the internal incentive system under which examiners’

’

performance is measured. We show that examination resources are not allocated based on either

the level of effort required to perform a competent and thorough examination or the social value

of the application. These incentives are perverse and color every aspect of the examination

process, and indirectly affect how users of the system behave. In Section II, we explain the user-

fee basis of USPTO’s funding and note that USPTO set the fees to recover the full cost of

service. What the two draft rules propose to do is stop providing certain services for which

USPTO is paid. In Section III, we show that continued examinations require less examining

resources than initial applications and, in some instances, may be a revenue center for USPTO.

In Section IV, we show that USPTO has serious problems recruiting and retaining competent

examiners. In Sections V and VI, we explain how USPTO exacerbates these problems by

rewarding examiners for unproductive activity and penalizing them for reviewing technically

complex applications. We believe that a regulatory impact analysis would assist the USPTO in

developing internal metrics to more accurately allocate its supply of examination resources to the

variety of products that its customers want to buy, rather than compel its customers to buy only

the one-size-fits-all product that USPTO would find it easier to sell.

ell.

See Attachment C, text accompanying footnote 24, in which Commissioner Doll admits

dmits

USPTO did no studies to identify the source of “rework” applications in its backlog, and had not

attempted to differentiate between rework applications that arise by applicant error or examiner error.

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How Examiner Performance is Measured

Patent examiner performance and productivity is based on a metric known as a “count.”

”

The count system is described in MPEP § 1705 (see Attachment Q). Examiners always get two

“counts” per application (and in a few cases, a third). The first “count” is given for the

r the

examiner’s First Action on the Merits (FAOM), and the second is given for “disposal.” The

The

examiner receives a “disposal” count if (1) he grants an Allowance (i.e., awards a patent), (2) the

the

applicant abandons the application, (3) the examiner issues a rejection to which the applicant

files a Request for Continued Examination (RCE), or (4) certain other actions. Thus, the

examiner gains a reward if his action leads to an RCE. That creates a strong incentive to issue at

least one final rejection.

The examiner’s reward of a count is independent of the validity of his action.

Applications that should not be rejected may be rejected solely to motivate the applicant to

submit an RCE. The examiner is neither rewarded for issuing “good” patents nor penalized for

for

issuing “bad” ones. There is no difference in the examiner’s reward if he rejects a “bad” claim or

claim or

rejects a “good” one. It’s all the same.

same.

All applications in the same technology area receive a similar “examination budget” – the

the

amount of time the examiner has to review it

– irrespective of several factors that obviously are

very important, both to the examiner and to the applicant:

•

Whether the application has many claims, or few

•

Whether the application is 10 pages long or 210 pages long

•

Whether the applicant cited no prior art references to USPTO or cited 200 references

The Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has complained about USPTO’s predilection for

not revealing the basis for its adverse decisions. See, e.g., In re Oetiker, 977 F.2d 1443, 1449, 24 USPQ2d

SPQ2d

1443, 1447 (Fed. Cir. 1992), Plager, J., concurring (“The examiner cannot sit mum, leaving the applicant

to shoot arrows into the dark hoping to somehow hit a secret objection harbored by the examiner”).

USPTO scales examination budgets by technologies – for example, complex biotech patent

applications receive more time than simple mechanical devices. However, we understand that for several

years USPTO has not adjusted its scaling factors to keep pace with increasing complexity in some

technological areas.

An application with many claims may be burdensome to the examiner but it does not impose a

genuine burden to USPTO because the applicant will have paid task-specific extra fees to cover the cost

of additional examination. The Office appears not to have aligned its internal incentives to the prices it

charges applicants.

In the proposed IDS Rule, (RIN 0651-AB95, “Changes to Information Disclosure Statement

ent

Requirements and Other Related Matters,” 71 Fed. Reg. 38808 (July 10, 2006)), USPTO would reduce

uce

the fee it charges for considering large numbers of prior art references, so long as they are presented early

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•

Whether the application is a new application or a fifth continuation

•

that can be allowed after ministerial review

•

or that otherwise can be predicted to require less time to examine than a new

application

•

Whether the application is in actual litigation, imminent litigation or no likely litigation

•

Whether the application is allowed or finally rejected.

•

The value of the intellectual property the applicant seeks to protect

•

The value of timely review to the applicant

Applicants give USPTO either definitive information or strong signals on all but one of these

factors that should affect examination. But under current USPTO compensation metrics, this

information does not affect an examiner’s time budget.

Finally, the examiner’s reward is the same whether he performs a competent and

thorough review, or a sloppy, careless and uninformed one – one count for a first action on the

merits, one count for disposal. Indeed, in response to a question of whether USPTO permitted

and incentivized “hide the ball” examination techniques in violation of the agency’s guidance

document, USPTO stated in a formal written decision that it would not review whether or not

counts were actually earned by bona fide examination.

II.

The December 2004 Increase in USPTO User Fees Was Advertised as the Solution

to the Backlog Problem

Effective December 2004, USPTO obtained the authority to impose higher user fees. For

example, the fee for each claim in excess of 20 was raised from $18 to $50 and for each

in examination. One option for regulatory analysis is the idea of calibrating its examination fees and

examiner time budget to account for cases where there is a great deal of potentially material prior art, as

required by 35 U.S.C. § 41(d)(2).

Many public comments have reminded USPTO that it has both the authority and the requisite

information it needs to rationally allocate examination time. See “Changes To Implement the Patent

Business Goals, Notice of Proposed Rulemaking” 64 Fed. Reg. 53772-53845 (October 4, 1999),

Alternatives (2) and (3) (“(2) charge fees for an application based upon what it costs (e.g., number of

claims, pages of specification, technology, IDS citations) to examine the application; and (3) credit

examiners based upon the number of claims in the application”); Comments of Heritage Woods,

http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/dapp/opla/comments/fpp_continuation/ heritagewoods_con.pdf,

pages 23-32 (discussing various alternatives to the Rules).

09/385,394, Decision on Petition of Feb. 10, 2006, “[I]nternal Office procedures (i.e., crediting

of work completed) are neither petitionable or appealable and will not be addressed further…” The

agency’s practice with respect to counts and “final rejection” are discussed further in Attachment J.

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independent claim in excess of 3 was raised from $86 to $200.

The patent bar and users of the

patent system, including many signatories to this letter, supported these increases precisely

because USPTO assured us that backlog would decline if only they had the funds to dramatically

increase staffing and establish incentives that improved examiner retention. Users of the patent

system agreed that Congress had “starved” USPTO during the period 1992-2003 by diverting

rting

hundreds of millions of dollars of user fee revenue:

88, 89

AIPLA supported the fee increase, which was said to be necessary “to

substantially cut the size of [the PTO’s] inventory,” because we believed that it

would allow the PTO to both improve quality of the patents it granted and reduce

the pendency of its backlog of patent applications. Congress did increase patent

fees beginning in fiscal year 2005, and the PTO is now in the second year of that

increase. It hired approximately 1,000 new patent examiners in FY 2005 and plans

to hire 1,000 more for each of the next four years. We understand that the Office

has experienced some difficulties in training and retaining these new examiners.

We also understand that the Office has developed a new approach to training

examiners and is targeting new hires that will be more likely to make their career

in the PTO.

On the other hand, the Office has repeatedly stated, without providing any

justification, that it “cannot hire its way out” of the backlog situation in which it

finds itself. Absent some compelling evidence to back up this claim, AIPLA

cannot accept this mere statement as justification for the proposed rule changes.

While it is true that hiring additional examiners would not instantly reduce the

backlog of pending applications, any search for a remedy to this problem must

consider the PTO’s current situation and how it got there. Congress essentially

starved the PTO of the resources it needed to keep pace with the increase in patent

application filings from roughly FY 1992 through FY 2003, diverting nearly $800

million in fees generated by this increase. Hundreds of examiners, who would be

fully trained and experienced today, were not hired. Many of the examiners in the

Compare 37 C.F.R. § 1.17 from 2004 and today (Attachment P). For example, an application

ion

with 10 independent claims and 52 total claims would incur $3,000 (= {(10-3) ×

3) ×

$200} + {(52-20) ×

$50}) in “excess claims,” in addition to the $1,000 filing fee for a basic application. Thus a moderately

complex application costs four times the filing fee of a basic application.

See AIPLA’s comment letter on the Continuations Rule, April 24, 2006, http://www.uspto.gov/

web/offices/pac/dapp/opla/comments/fpp_continuation/aipla.pdf at page 3 (page 4 of the pdf) (“Congress

essentially starved USPTO of the resources it needed to keep pace with the increase in patent application

filings from roughly FY 1992 through FY 2003, diverting nearly $800 million in fees generated by this

increase. Hundreds of examiners, who would be fully trained and experienced today, were not hired.”)

)

AIPLA’s letter, loc. cit.; Figueroa v. United States, 466 F.3d 1023, 1027-28 (Fed. Cir. 2006)

2006)

(describing the history of “fee diversion,” Congressional failure to authorize USPTO’s authority to spend

pend

the fee income it earned).

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PTO at that time have aged and are retiring. Now the Office must find and train the

needed examiners, and must provide an attractive workplace and appealing

working conditions in order to retain them. This solution will take time; it will not

happen overnight. But neither did the crisis in which the Office finds itself arise

overnight.

The purpose of the additional user fee revenue was to increase hiring, and indeed, USPTO

forecasts that with these new hires and low attrition, the pendency time will be under 35 months

in 2011, while without hiring pendency would have exceeded 40 months.

Now USPTO

officials say that the Office “cannot hire its way out” of the backlog.

og.

III.

Continued Examinations Require Less Examining Resources than Initial

Applications

In the preamble to the proposed Continuations Rule, USPTO assumes that the resources

needed to examine initial and continuation applications are identical. Therefore, every continuing

application not submitted means an initial application will be examined instead.

There are three

scenarios under which this assumption could hold: the first is rare, and the other two are highly

implausible. The rare scenario requires that the examiner who reviewed a parent application not

review the corresponding continuation application. The first implausible scenario concedes that

the same examiner reviews both applications, but assumes that at the time he reviews the

continued examination he has no recollection of the earlier application.

In the second

implausible scenario, all effort expended in earlier examination becomes irrelevant and unusable

in continued examination. USPTO has presented no evidence supporting any of these

propositions. In fact, common sense suggests that they are true only in unusual circumstances

and therefore should not be used as the basis for extrapolating changes in USPTO output.

Continuations are almost always reviewed by the same examiner – the only routine exception is

when the earlier examiner leaves USPTO employment. The typical time lag between rounds of

examination is five to ten months, so a complete lack of recollection is unlikely.

See Chicago Town Hall Slides at 51.

Eric Yeager, “USPTO Commissioner Doll Says That Limiting Continuations Will Improve

Patent Landscape,” 72 Patent, Trademark & Copyright Journal 704ff (“‘We can’t hire our way out of the

the

patent application backlog, and that is certain,’ Doll said.”). Even if it is assumed that USPTO’s forecasts

casts

are valid and reliable, the effect of these two rules would be to reduce pendency by just three months. See

Attachment N, slide 53 of the Chicago Town Hall Slides, reproduced at Attachment H, section II.

II.

71 Fed. Reg. 50, col. 1.

A parallel is easy to make to OMB’s experience in regulatory review. Staff turnover sometimes

means final proposed and draft final rules are reviewed by different Desk Officers, especially when a

significant period of time has elapsed. Rarely, however, does a Desk Officer reviewing a draft final rule

have no recollection of his own prior review of the draft proposed rule.

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Instead, it is far more likely that the same examiner reviews both the original and

continuation applications, and recalls a significant amount of detail.

Examiners reuse the prior

art search (the single largest time commitment in reviewing a new application for the first time)

from earlier rounds of examination, and only do “follow up” searches of prior art that was

recently published. Therefore, the examining resources necessary to examine a continuation are

almost certain to be less than those needed to examine a new application. That means for every

continued application USPTO does not examine, it will examine a fraction of one new

application with the same resources.

Continuation applications, CIPs, and RCEs appear to be at least self-funding

and may

be profit centers for USPTO. We predict, for example, that continuation applications on average

require significantly less examination resources and generate higher levels of maintenance fee

revenue than original applications. We also predict that a well-conducted Regulatory Impact

Analysis would show that the perverse incentive structures described in Section I, and problems

the Office has recruiting and retaining competent examiners, are greater contributors to backlog

than the application attributes it proposes to regulate.

If the inefficiencies created internally by

USPTO were addressed, we predict that USPTO’s backlog would be brought under control. Of

course, performing a Regulatory Impact Analysis that complies with Circular A-4 would allow

low

USPTO to evaluate these various issues and enable it to structure reforms that attack the

underlying problem rather than unrelated but observable symptoms.

IV.

USPTO Has Serious Problems Recruiting and (Especially) Retaining Competent

Examiners

To work as a patent examiner, one must have earned a college degree in a relevant

technical field plus, in some technological fields, have a higher lever degree, such as a master’s

or Ph.D. Job postings on the USPTO web site give a starting salary of $38,435, and promotion

USPTO will have ample data that can be analyzed to determine how often the examiner of the

continuation application is not the same as the examiner of the earlier application. We encourage USPTO

to include an analysis of this data in preparing a complete regulatory analysis of the impact of the

Continuations Rule.

The parallel to OMB review applies here as well. The resources it needs to review draft rules

and ICRs would be significantly greater if every submission were new and there was no institutional

memory.

If they are not, then USPTO has set its fees in violation of statute, and has both the obligation

and authority to reset its fees. 35 U.S.C. § 41(d)(2) (“The Director shall establish fees … to recover the

estimated average cost to the Office…”); see also footnote 29.

29.

See Section IV below and Chicago Town Hall slides (Attachment N) at 20 (shows hiring and

attrition over the past few years).

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potential limited to GS-14 equivalent.

nt.

Postings indicate that higher salaries ($63,885 -

$83,052) are available for examiners with Ph.D. degrees or the equivalent.

These salaries may

be competitive for newly minted degree-holders, but they probably are not sufficient to retain

employees, especially in the expensive metropolitan Washington, DC area. GS-15 positions pay

better ($120,982-$145,400), but they require years of experience and usually involve

lve

management responsibilities.

The retention problem is made worse by the fact that examiners obtain extremely

valuable, specialized human capital while employed at USPTO, and they must leave government

service to capitalize on it.

100

Starting private sector salaries for persons with similar skills and

human capital are much higher – for example, a median starting salary in the Virginia suburbs

for an electrical engineer with a Master’s Degree and one year experience in some technical

ical

fields is about $70,000 per year. Many examiners leave USPTO to attend law school, or more

frequently attend law school at night while still employed at the USPTO, to become patent

lawyers. Attorneys with 7-9 years’ experience in law firms earn about $200,000 per year.

ear.

101

In short, examiner retention is a significant problem and one that may well be endemic to

the nature of USPTO’s work. It may, in fact, be an impossible problem to solve without

returning to the deferred compensation civil service model, which rewarded long term service.

102

Labor markets are brutally efficient at allocating resources, and USPTO simply may not be able

to overcome normal market forces with any of the tools at its disposal.

See

http://jobsearch.usajobs.opm.gov/getjob.asp?JobID=53094580&jbf574=CM56&brd=3876&AVSDM=20

07%2D04%2D14+13%3A00%3A07&q=EXAMINER&vw=d&Logo=0&FedPub=Y&caller=%2Fa9pto

%2Easp&FedEmp=N&SUBMIT1.x=0&SUBMIT1.y=0&ss=0&SUBMIT1=Search+for+Jobs&TabNum=

1&rc=3.

See

http://jobsearch.usajobs.opm.gov/getjob.asp?JobID=53094737&AVSDM=2007%2D04%2D14+13%3A0

0%3A05&Logo=0&q=EXAMINER&FedEmp=N&jbf574=CM56&brd=3876&vw=d&ss=0&FedPub=Y

&caller=/a9pto.asp&SUBMIT1.x=0&SUBMIT1.y=0&SUBMIT1=Search+for+Jobs.

100

Attrition also has social benefits: e.g., the corps of patent experts outside the government

ent

performs better because there is a cohort that has worked on the “other side” of the table. The challenge to

e to

USPTO is to avoid excess attrition, especially among its most competent examiners.

101

American Intellectual Property Law Assn, Report of the Economic Survey 2005, page I-52.

102

We are aware of no serious interest in such a change. We mention it only to point out that

potential solutions may exist if the problem of retention per se is deemed crucial.

TTACHMENT

F: E

XISTING

EGULATIONS OR

DMINISTRATIVE

RACTICES

AGE

F-7

REATED OR

ONTRIBUTED TO THE

ROBLEMS

USPTO S

EEKS TO

EMEDY

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