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Patent Office Ready for Extra Patent Number Digit
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office says it won’t have a Y2K moment, when it issues its first utility patent with an eight-digit number.
A PTO spokesperson told Bloomberg Law that its systems are ready for the big occasion. In fact, the PTO will be unveiling a new design for its patent grant cover in celebration of the eight-digit patent on March 11, at the South by Southwest festival.
Curtis Behmann, a Canada and U.S. patent agent based in Ottawa with Borden Ladner Gervais LLP, sent out a tweet pointing to a PTO notice saying that it will issue U.S. Patent No. 10,000,000 this year.
Behmann told Bloomberg Law he predicts patent 10 million will issue sometime on the last or second to last Tuesday in June (patents are issued once a week on Tuesday), though he pointed out that if it came a week later, it would issue on July 3, just before Independence Day.