USPTO Announces Deployment of PatentIn 3.2

The United States Patent and Trademark Office is pleased to announce that PatentIn 3.2, an enhanced version of PatentIn 3.1, was released on 2 December 2002.

PatentIn 3.2 contains additional features designed to ease the authoring of sequence listings. PatentIn 3.2 is also certified for Windows XP.

Features of PatentIn 3.2

PatentIn 3.2 offers customers features designed to lessen the time required to prepare patent applications containing nucleic acid and amino acid sequences. These features include:

• Ability To Create Default Explanations
  
  • PatentIn 3.2 provides default explanations for “n”s and “Xaa”s in sequence listings. Default explanations are labeled as miscellaneous features containing the location of the variable characters, and the message, “n is a, c, g or t” for DNA sequences, “n is a, c, g or u” for RNA sequences or “Xaa can be any naturally occurring amino acid” for protein sequences.
    
  • Customers also have the option to create definitions for variables.
    
• Ability to Apply Comments to All Sequences

  PatentIn 3.2 allows customers to apply a comment for one artificial or unknown organism to all other sequences in the project with “artificial” or “unknown” as the organism.

Return of the Character Filter

PatentIn 3.2 permits the customers to import text files of sequences that contain characters other than nucleotide or amino acid symbols such as spaces and numbers. This benefit was previously offered in PatentIn 2.x.

Action Required for Use of PatentIn 3.2

To obtain PatentIn 3.2 and installation instructions, please go to: http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/patin/patentin32rel.htm. The USPTO will offer training in the new software to the public. The training dates will be listed on this website when they are finalized.

Contact Information

For assistance or to provide feedback, please contact the Patent Electronic Business Center at 866-217-9197 (toll-free) or send an e-mail to EBC@uspto.gov.