Sunday, December 11, 2011

Assignees and Full Disclosure

USPTO has issued an RFI seeking comments on proposed changes to the filing of assignee data.  The Office, as the legal crowd likes to refer to it, presents several alternative approaches to compelling more complete reporting of assignee information.  Comments are requested by January 23rd.

It's our position that a patent should be treated like any other property with full disclosure of ownership and changes in ownership.  And full disclosure should include the names of the owners - the names of the people - of the entities that report that they are the assignee of a patent.  We're tired of having to hunt down "Hide in Plain Sight Patent Holdings of East Texas" and their ilk.