A decision was made regarding the new US rules which were not implemented because an injunction was issued before they came into force.

Judge Cacheris from the District Court finally delivered a judgment regarding the new USPTO rules which were not implemented because an injunction was issued before they came into force on 1 November 2007.

The injunction will be upheld and the USPTO will not be able to implement the new rules. The Court found that the new rules were "substantive in nature and exceed the scope of the USPTO’s rulemaking authority". In other words, the new rules would have changed the rights of applicants and this requires a statutory amendment. United States patent law does not allow limitations regarding the number of claims and/or number of applications; nor does it allow the USPTO to reject an application due to the fact that the novelty search carried out by the applicant was not sufficiently thorough, cf. planned changes regarding more substantive disclosure of prior art.

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