Error in Issued Patent
February 08, 2010
I have recently had a patent issued. I started out with an attorney and after the first office action I took the case over myself to save money and because all the claims were rejected and I thought the likelihood of issuing was slim. I went through 4 office actions and some dialog with the examiner.
When I received the issued patent, it was exactly what the examiner and I had agreed on with one exception. I had begun with 7 drawings and during the exam process I had reduced the number of drawings to 4 because most of what was illustrated in the last 3 drawings was related to claims that were rejected. The problem is that the USPTO printed all 7 drawings in the final patent document. Only the first 4 are relevant.
Being new at this, I am not sure what i should do. I am considering leaving it as issued because of the hassle of changing anything. However, i worry that the patent doesn’t really make sense as issued because nothing in the last 3 drawings are described in the description and there are many feature identification numbers that are never referenced. Can anyone advise me of the pros and cons of leaving such an error alone vs going through the process of having it corrected.