	      Advance Notice of Change to "References Cited" on 
			  the Front Page of a Patent 

   Beginning with patents printed after January 1, 2001, the United States 
Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) will indicate references listed by a 
patent examiner on a "Notice of References Cited," Form PTO-892, with an 
asterisk in the "References Cited" section of the front page of a patent 
document. 
   
   Indication of whether or not a reference was listed by the examiner will 
be helpful in compiling statistical data related to prior art submissions 
so that the USPTO can better consider whether changes are required to the 
rules governing prior art statements. In the past, the Office has conducted 
numerous surveys of application files for information regarding prior art 
statements, manually reviewing the application files to retrieve 
information regarding references cited.	While future surveys will still 
include manual review of application files, e.g., for the length of 
documents cited by applicants, compiling data regarding information cited 
by other than the examiner will be more efficient with this new indication. 

   Indication of a reference with an asterisk should not be considered to 
reflect any significance other than that the reference was listed on a 
"Notice of References Cited," Form PTO-892. When an examiner lists 
references on a Form PTO-892, the examiner lists  references that are 
relied upon in a prior art rejection or mentioned as pertinent. See Manual 
of Patent Examining Procedure (MPEP) Section 707.05(c), 7th Ed., Rev. 1 
(Feb. 2000). The examiner does not list references which were previously 
cited by the applicant (and initialed by an examiner) on an Information 
Disclosure Statement, for example, on a PTOL-1449. See MPEP Sections 609 
and 707.05(b), (c) and (d). No distinction will be made in the "References 
Cited" section for other sources of references. Thus, references cited in a 
protest, by an attorney or agent not acting in a representative capacity 
but on behalf of a single inventor, and by the applicant will not be 

   "All electronic versions of the patent will have some indication of 
which references were cited by the examiner. The paper version and the 
electronic images of the front page will show an asterisk as indicated 
below. 

   An example how the "References Cited" section of the patent will appear 
is as follows: 

   [56]			       References Cited
 
			     U.S. PATENT DOCUMENTS

   2,234,192     *      7/1955	    Greene  	                     75/507 
   4,991,048      	8/1990	    Larkin			    206/207
   5,000,186      	12/1991	    Amis			    267/340
   5,000,993     *     12/1991	    Thomas et al		     75/507

			   FOREIGN PATENT DOCUMENTS

   9500000	 *	6/1995	    Belgium			     75/507
   2-00000	 *	6/1990	    Japan			     75/507
   9400000		9/1994	    Unitcd Kingdom.

			      OTHER PUBLICATIONS

   Hill, "Ferrous Precipitation," Journal of the American Defenestration
   Association, Jan. 1989, Pages 34-46. * 
   Clymerhill-Irons, "Ferrous Ascension for the Eighties," Proceedings of 
   the International Ferrous Ascension Society, Jan.-Mar. 1979, Pages 
   1111-1163. 

   *cited by examiner 

   Questions regarding this notice may be directed to Karin Tyson,
Senior Legal Advisor, Office of Patent Legal Administration, Office of
the Deputy Commissioner for Patent Examination Policy, by telephone at
(703)306-3159, by facsimile at (703) 872- 9411, or by e-mail to
karin.tyson@uspto.qov.

Nov. 29, 2000						 NICHOLAS P. GODICI
                                                   Commissioner for Patents



