United States Patent and Trademark Office OG Notices: 15 August 2006

                        Registration Examination to be
                  Based on MPEP, 8th Edition, Revision No. 4

   Effective on or about Thursday, October 19, 2006, the
computer-delivered registration examination will make the 8th Edition,
Revision 4 of the Manual of Patent Examination Procedure (MPEP)
available on the computer monitor. As of that date, all questions
on the examination will be based on the contents of the 8th Edition,
Revision 4 of the MPEP.

   The last day of testing for the 8th Edition, Revision 2 of the
MPEP is expected to be Tuesday, October 17, 2006.

   The format of the examination will remain the same. Thus,
computer-delivered examinations will include 100 multiple-choice
questions, and only ninety of the questions will be scored. To pass
the examination a candidate must correctly answer seventy percent
(sixty-three) of the ninety scored questions. Each of the scored
questions has been used on previous examination forms and had been
psychometrically analyzed to ensure the question provides a useful
assessment of a candidate's legal qualifications.

   Ten of the questions on the computer-delivered examination will
be undergoing beta testing. The ten beta test questions will be
distributed throughout the examination. The ten beta test questions
will not be identified and will not be scored. These questions will be
psychometrically analyzed to assess if the questions are too simple,
too complex, or too ambiguous to serve as an adequate basis for
measuring candidates' legal qualifications. Accordingly, these
questions will not be included in the scoring of a candidate's
examination or in determining whether a candidate has passed or failed
an examination. Beta test questions will not be available for review,
for example, by candidates who do not pass the examination.

   Beta test questions that are found to accurately measure
candidates' legal qualifications will be introduced into future
examination forms and scored. The future examination forms will include
different beta test questions. In this manner, the Office will continue
to beta test new questions in the registration examination to identify
questions capable of measuring candidates' legal qualifications and add
those questions to the data bank of questions that can be used and
scored in the registration examination.