‘A Study in Scarlet’—Powers of Attorney and USPTO Rulemaking, Part II: The USPTO Fails to Take the Paperwork Reduction Act Seriously

In Part I, I introduced the USPTO’s unpublished guidance document for signatures on powers of attorney, and the incompatibility of that guidance with state law, regulation, and the USPTO’s published guidance. Multiple laws should have caught the problems and led to a corrected document. Today, we’ll look at the USPTO’s pattern of ignoring those laws in multiple rounds of review under the Paperwork Reduction Act.Read More