The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is 
continuing its efforts to expedite and improve the overall patent 
process. Accordingly, the USPTO is exploring how to best utilize 
available electronic resources to provide examiners with information 
(e.g., prior art, search reports, etc.) from applicant's other 
applications as early as possible to increase patent examination 
quality and efficiency. These other applications, for example, could 
have the same or substantially the same disclosure (e.g., domestic 
parent and counterpart foreign applications) as the U.S. application 
being examined. In addition to improving patent examination quality and 
efficiency, providing the examiner with this information from 
applicant's other applications will reduce applicant's burden to 
provide this information to the USPTO.
    Further, the USPTO is seeking to reduce the issuance time of a 
patent by eliminating potentially unnecessary information from the 
front page of the patent. In particular, the USPTO is seeking public 
comment on what information, beyond a copy of the specification and 
drawing that is required by statute, should be part of the patent 
considering that complete information concerning U.S. patents and U.S. 
patent application publications are accessible to the public via the 
Patent Application Information Retrieval (PAIR) system.
    To assist the USPTO in determining the best way to address these 
two topics, the USPTO is hosting a roundtable event to obtain public 
input. The roundtable will be open for any member of the public and 
will provide a forum for a discussion of the questions identified in 
this notice. Written comments in response to these questions set forth 
in this Notice also are requested.