Revised PTOL-85 Issue Fee
                               Transmittal Form

   The purpose of this notice is to advise the public that form PTOL-85
has been substantially revised so as to be more effective and easier to
use. Form PTOL-85 starts out as a three page form. Page 1 is form
PTOL-85B, the Issue Fee Transmittal form. This form is labeled "TRANSMIT
THIS FORM WITH FEE" in red at the bottom. Form PTOL-85B is used for
submitting the issue fee. The PALM data that is printed on this form
will be much clearer than before as it is now the first (or top) printed
copy. This should ensure that the submitted issue fee is promptly
credited to the correct application file.

   Pages 2 and 3 of PTOL-85 are, respectively, the applicant's copy and the
PTO's copy of PTOL-85, the Notice of Allowance and Issue Fee Due form.
The applicant's copy is labeled "YOUR COPY" in red at the bottom. The
applicant should retain the applicant's copy of form PTOL-85.

   Form PTOL-85B (i.e., page 1) has also been revised to have the
Certificate of Mailing in the upper right corner and to clarify that the
Certificate of Mailing is to be used for domestic mailings only.
Additionally, the CURRENT CORRESPONDENCE ADDRESS block shall permit
write-in corrections for making minor changes in the correspondence
address. Alternatively, a change in the correspondence address, or an
indication of a "Fee Address" for maintenance fee notifications, may be
made by checking the appropriate set of brackets in Block 1 and
including the appropriate attachment.

   Block 3 of the revised form PTOL-85B will be used to indicate assignee
data to be printed on the patent, as well as the status of the assignee
as: (1) individual, (2) corporation or other private group entity, or
(3) government entity. Applicants are being asked to indicate the status
of the assignee in order to increase the accuracy of the assignee
category codes being entered by the Office into the Patent Full Text
Data Base, which can later be extracted and used for statistical
purposes. This has become necessary since the assignee's category is not
always evident at the point in the publication process when the
assignment data is being captured from the PTOL-85B form.

   The applicant is requested to transmit an extra copy of PTOL-85B when
payment of the issue fee is by way of authorization to debit a Deposit
Account.

February 21,1997                                          STEPHEN O. KUNIN
                                             Deputy Assistant Commissioner
                                            for Patent Policy and Projects