United States Patent and Trademark Office OG Notices: 01 July 2003

                           Notice of Elimination of
                           Batch Update Practice to
                           Change Power of Attorney

   Effective immediately, the ability to use a "batch update"
to change powers of attorney is discontinued. A batch update is a
procedure to request a change in the Office records for a batch of
patent applications by submitting a spreadsheet listing the
applications on a disk or a CD. With this process, a patent attorney or
patent agent of record in each of the applications (or the pro
se applicant of each of the applications on the spreadsheet) can
request that the address associated with a "Customer Number" be
used for the correspondence address and/or the fee
address for the patent applications listed on the spreadsheet.
Until now, an applicant could also indicate when a list of
practitioners associated with a Customer Number should be used for the
practitioners of record for the patent applications listed
on the spreadsheet. Manual of Patent Examining Procedure
(8th ed.2001) (Rev. 1, Feb. 2003), Section 403, Customer Number
Practice, will be revised to reflect this change in practice.

   Where the power of attorney (signed by the applicant or
the assignee of the entire interest) is to the practitioners associated
with a Customer Number (e.g., where PTO/SB/81 was used), the Office
will continue to process a "Request for a Customer Number Data
Change" (PTO/SB/124) to change the practitioners associated with the
Customer Number, and as a result, the list of patent attorneys or
agents having a power of attorney for the application. Furthermore,
where the correspondence address for an application is the address
associated with a Customer Number (e.g., where PTO/SB/121,
Correspondence Address Indication form, was used), the Office will
continue to process a "Request for a Customer Number Data Change"
(PTO/SB/124) to change the address associated with the Customer Number,
and as a result, the correspondence address for the application.

   The batch update process will continue to be permitted
for making changes in the correspondence address and the fee address in
patent applications. Any batch update request that has been filed, but
has not been processed, will be processed without changing the power of
attorney (i.e., only a correspondence address and/or fee address will
be changed). To change the power of attorney for the applications on
the list, the batch update requestor will be instructed to submit a
separate request to change a power of attorney (to the attorneys
associated with a Customer Number) in each application on the
spreadsheet. Forms PTO/SB/81, Power of Attorney, and PTO/SB/82,
Revocation/Appointment of Power of Attorney, may be used to submit such
a request.

   Questions regarding batch updates or Customer Number practice
should be directed to the Electronic Business Center by telephone to
866-217-9197 (toll-free), 703-305-3028, 703-308-6845 or by e-mail to
ebc@uspto.gov.

June 5, 2003                                             NICHOLAS P. GODICI
                                                   Commissioner for Patents