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Semiconductor Customer Partnership Meeting

Posted by J Matthew Buchanan at April 10, 2006 04:29 PM

A Semiconductor Customer Partnership meeting will be held on Tuesday April 25, 2006 at the Alexandria headquarters of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). Established in June 1999, the Semiconductor Customer Partnership provides a forum for the continued exchange of ideas toward improving the quality and timeliness of the examination process in semiconductor technology. The partnership also provides members of the semiconductor community with an opportunity to learn about recent business process improvements and policy changes that have occurred at the USPTO. Partnership meetings are held biannually in the Washington DC and San Francisco Bay areas.

The partnership meeting is open to anyone interested in the intellectual property issues facing the semiconductor industry. Presenters for this meeting include managers from the Semiconductor work group in Technology Center 2800, which is responsible for examining patent applications filed in Semiconductor Devices, Processing of Semiconductor Devices, Digital Logic Circuits, Solid State Electronic Circuits, Memory Circuits and Devices, Analog Circuits and Devices, and Design and Analysis of Semiconductor circuits and Masks. The semiconductor workgroup is one of the largest in the patent operation with 18 art units and over 300 examiners.

The agenda will include presentations on:

Training Program for New Examiners
State of the Semiconductor Workgroup
State of the Semiconductor Industry
Proposed new rules package
Working with Examiners in the Hoteling Environment
Prosecution issues in the Semiconductor Workgroup
Classification Harmonization with USPTO, EPO and JPO

In addition, there will be sessions devoted to customer presentations and a roundtable discussion in the afternoon.

Date and Location:

The Partnership meeting is scheduled for Tuesday, April 25, 2006, from 9:00 AM–4:00 PM in the Jefferson Conference Center at the USPTO headquarters. The Conference center is located at the lobby level of Jefferson Building, 500 Dulany Street, Alexandria, Virginia.

If you are interested in attending the meeting, please contact Tom Thomas at 571-272-1664 or by e-mail to tom.thomas@uspto.gov.

Note: The Semiconductor Customer Partnership is designed and developed to be a forum to share ideas, experiences, and insights between individual users and the USPTO. The USPTO does not intend to use these customer partnership groups to arrive at any consensus. Invitations to participate will indicate that individual opinions are sought, rather than a group consensus and that the meetings are intended to be informal in nature and have varying participants. These customer partnership groups are formed with full recognition of the USPTO’s responsibility under the Federal Advisory Committee Act (FACA), and that these customer partnership groups are not established as FACA compliant committees.

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