By Michael Borella — On December 29, 2022, to the relief of many practitioners and applicants, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office delayed the effective date of its controversial incentivized transition to DOCX format for patent application filing. A new final rule establishes that the $400 fee for filing patent specifications, claims, and abstracts (not including design, plant, or provisional applications) in a format other than DOCX will not be required until April 3, 2023. The USPTO has supported filing in DOCX format for over 5 years. However, uptake was initially slow. In August 2020, the USPTO published a final…
