Headquartered within steps of the USPTO with an affiliate office in Tokyo, Oblon is one of the largest law firms in the United States focused exclusively on intellectual property law.
1968
Norman Oblon with Stanley Fisher and Marvin Spivak launched what was to become Oblon, McClelland, Maier & Neustadt, LLP, one of the nation's leading full-service intellectual property law firms.
Outside the US, we service companies based in Japan, France, Germany, Italy, Saudi Arabia, and farther corners of the world. Our culturally aware attorneys speak many languages, including Japanese, French, German, Mandarin, Korean, Russian, Arabic, Farsi, Chinese.
Oblon's professionals provide industry-leading IP legal services to many of the world's most admired innovators and brands.
From the minute you walk through our doors, you'll become a valuable part of a team that fosters a culture of innovation, client service and collegiality.
The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) issued final rules implementing the inventor's oath or declaration provisions of the America Invents Act (AIA) on August 14, 2012.
April 28-30, 2024
November 16, 2023 - In-Person in Munich
October 27, 2023
The USPTO recently proposed new fees, effective January 2021. While this date seems far away, patent applicants should consider one fee in particular and how they could start preparing for the change. The proposed fee at issue is for filing a non-provisional utility application using DOCX. The fee will be $400 lower ($320) than the fee for filing the application without DOCX ($720).
What is DOCX? A program that the PTO has been working to implement for some time, and enables applications to be filed in text format, as opposed to PDF. DOCX makes applications more accessible to Examiners, and the publication of the applications is simplified because the need to OCR the application is eliminated.
In 2017, Oblon was invited to participate in a PTO Text Pilot Program and was one of the first firms to file DOCX applications and to give feedback to the PTO on the limitations of DOCX at that time. Oblon was later invited to attend a workshop at the PTO with other firms to share ideas and create user friendly suggestions for DOCX. The PTO later made DOCX accessible to all users. Applicants may want to become familiar with DOCX and implement training and processes to enable its use so as to save $400/app. when the fees become effective. Oblon regularly files selected applications using the DOCX format in preparation to provide the cost savings that is expected to be available to our clients in 2021.