Small Entity Change for 2021

On December 21, 2020, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office amended practice rule 37 C.F.R. §1.27, to expand the government use license exception. First, a Federal employee-inventor must be granted to the Federal government in the event that employee-inventor retains ownership rights in the invention. Further, and more significantly because it potentially covers more small-to-medium enterprises (SME) that would not normally be covered under the smalle entity rules, where the SME contracts or licenses its invention to the Federal government but retains ownership over that invention.

Full text here.

The effective date is January 20, 2021. Note that large and micro entity statuses are not affected by this rule change.