the firm's post-grant practitioners are some of the most experienced in the country.

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Artificial Intelligence (AI)
Artificial Intelligence (AI)
Digital Health
Digital Health
Energy & Renewables
Energy & Renewables

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About Our

Law Firm

About Our Law Firm

Headquartered within steps of the USPTO with an affiliate office in Tokyo, Oblon is one of the largest law firms in the United States focused exclusively on intellectual property law.

Get to know our

History

Get to know our History

1968
Norman Oblon with Stanley Fisher and Marvin Spivak launched what was to become Oblon, McClelland, Maier & Neustadt, LLP, one of the nation's leading full-service intellectual property law firms.

Our Local and

Global Reach

Our Local and Global Reach

Outside the US, we service companies based in Japan, France, Germany, Italy, Saudi Arabia, and farther corners of the world. Our culturally aware attorneys speak many languages, including Japanese, French, German, Mandarin, Korean, Russian, Arabic, Farsi, Chinese.

A few of our

ACCOLADES

A few of our ACCOLADES

Oblon's professionals provide industry-leading IP legal services to many of the world's most admired innovators and brands.

OPPORTUNITIES FOR YOUR

Career

OPPORTUNITIES FOR YOUR Career

From the minute you walk through our doors, you'll become a valuable part of a team that fosters a culture of innovation, client service and collegiality.

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GET In Touch

A few ways to GET In Touch
US Office

Telephone: 703-413-3000
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Tokyo Office

Telephone: +81-3-6212-0550
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Downloadable

Patent Forms

Downloadable Patent Forms

The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) issued final rules implementing the inventor's oath or declaration provisions of the America Invents Act (AIA) on August 14, 2012.

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Our Blogs

USPTO Integrates New AI-Based Functionality With Examiner Search Tools

  • October 26, 2022
  • Firm News

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) recently added a new artificial intelligence (AI)-based “Similarity Search” feature to the prior art search tools available to examiners. This Similarity Search feature is designed to be an enhanced replacement of the Patent Linguistic Utility Service (PLUS) search tool and provides examiners with optional new search capabilities to access prior art alongside traditional document retrieval approaches.  The PLUS search tool received as input a keyword list generated from scanned portions of the Specification being searched and produced a list of only U.S. patents and published U.S. applications that most closely match the Specification.  The new AI-based Similarity Search tool receives the full text of the Specification as input and outputs a list of both domestic and foreign patent documents that are similar to the Specification being searched.  Further, an examiner can refine the AI-based Similarity Search queries by emphasizing certain Cooperative Patent Classification (CPC) symbols and certain paragraphs, sentences, or words in a Specification to focus on specific concepts in the Specification being searched.  The AI-based Similarity Search tool queries are completed in seconds, whereas PLUS searches sometimes could take hours to generate.

The USPTO has also established procedures for recording Similarity Search data in the application file.  When an examiner uses the Similarity Search tool as part of a search for an application, the examiner’s search history will indicate that AI-based Similarity Search capabilities were used.  When an examiner selects a Similarity Search query to be included in the search notes of the application file wrapper, all documents retrieved by that query, along with the query itself, are listed in the search notes.  The search results produced using the examiner’s emphasized text and/or CPC symbols for a given application will also be listed in the search history in addition to the emphasized text and CPC symbols if such information is public.

More information is available in the following Notice from the USPTO: https://www.uspto.gov/sites/default/files/documents/ai-sim-search.pdf