By Donald Zuhn — On Monday, Senators Thom Tillis (R-NC) and Tom Cotton (R-AR) sent a letter to Drew Hirshfeld, the Commissioner for Patents at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, to propose that the USPTO conduct a pilot program on a sequenced approach to patent examination. In their letter, Sen. Tillis (at right), the Ranking Member of the Senate Subcommittee on Intellectual Property, and Sen. Cotton (at left), a member of the Subcommittee on Intellectual Property, suggest that a sequenced approach to patent examination, in which applications are first examined for compliance with 35 U.S.C. §§ 102, 103, and…
