Federal Regulations: The regulations of the departments and agencies of the U.S. Federal Government as published in the Code of Federal Regulations.
Fee, Filing: The fee charged by a patent office for filing a patent application.
Fee, Issue: The fee charged by a patent office for issuing a patent.
Fee, Maintenance: The periodic fee charge by the patent office for maintaining a current patent.
Fee, Petition: The fee charged by a patent office for reviewing a petition filed by an applicant.
Field of Endeavor: The area of technology that an inventor invents within. May also be called a technical field or field of the invention.
Field of Use: The technical field or market within which an invention is licensed. The licensee may not sell the invention within other markets.
Figure Legend: An explanation of what marks mean on a drawing. Patent drawings do not have legends.
File History: The complete file of a patent application containing all related papers prepared by the patent office and the applicant during the prosecution of the application.
File Wrapper Estoppel: When one amends an application during the course of prosecuting a patent application to overcome a prior art rejection by narrowing the claims, one is precluded from asserting a broader interpretation after the patent issues. This type of estoppel clearly exists in the face of a prior art rejection, but can also exist based upon comments made in writing by the applicant and any other representations, causing one to conclude that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office relied on certain representations regarding scope of claim in allowing the application. Under current law, file wrapper estoppel does not necessarily preclude the use of the doctrine of equivalents in the assertion of an infringement claim, but does substantially restrict the application of the doctrine of equivalents. This is also referred to as prosecution history
estoppel.
File Wrapper: This is the collection of documents located in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office including a patent application and communications by the applicant and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office with respect to the application.
Filing Date: The date when a sufficiently complete patent application arrives at the patent office.
Filing Fee: This is the fee charged by a patent office for processing a patent application.
Final Action: An office action that contains a final rejection of one or more claims or another final action.
Final Rejection: A rejection of a claim that is made final on a second or subsequent examination or consideration. After a rejection of a claim is made final, an applicant must generally either agree with Examiner suggestions or appeal the rejection.
First Action: The first examination on the merits of the claims.
First to File: A system in which the first person to file a patent application on a patentable invention will be awarded a patent. Patent systems in all countries other than the U.S. and the Philippines use this system.
First to Invent: A system in which the first person to invent an invention will be awarded a patent. This system is used in the U.S. and in the Philippines.
Foreign Filing Date: The date a non-U.S. patent application was filed that establishes priority of invention.
Forfeited Application: An allowed patent application on which the issue or maintenance fee has not been paid within the required period of time.
Fraud on the Patent and Trademark Office: This is now frequently referred to as inequitable conduct. An applicant and the applicant's attorney have an obligation to acquaint the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office with any prior art known to be material to the patentability of the patent application claims. There is no requirement that the applicant perform a patentability search. The standard is merely one of sharing knowledge. One is generally not required to identify art that would be merely cumulative.
Frivolous Invention: An invention that lacks utility because it is frivolous.
Front Page Drawing: The drawing selected by an examiner to appear on the front page of a U.S. patent.
Failure of Others: A secondary test of patentability relevant to the issue of whether an invention is obvious is whether others have failed to come up with the solution previously. Another way of expressing this concept is the existence of a long-standing and unsolved problem that tends to lend weight to patentability.
