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Duties, and Who May Practise

The short version

The duty that catches people is not the duty to disclose. It is the separate duty to perform a reasonable inquiry, which reaches what a reasonable review would have surfaced rather than only what you were handed. The AI guidance is built on the same two duties, and creates no new ones.

Also here: who may sign for a foreign-domiciled applicant, and three 2024 rules on who may appear at all.

This is the layer a practitioner operates inside every day, and the one where the consequences attach to conduct rather than to claims.

Two duties, not one. The duty of candor covers disclosing information material to patentability. Separately, each party submitting a paper owes an inquiry reasonable under the circumstances, including reviewing documents to identify material information. A duty to disclose reaches what you have. A duty of reasonable inquiry reaches what looking would have found.

The April 2024 AI guidance is best understood against that pair. It does not prohibit AI-assisted drafting and does not require disclosing that AI was used. It confirms the existing duties apply unchanged, and the signature certification is where they bite: a signature certifies a reasonable inquiry was made, whatever produced the draft.

The Authorities

Duties of disclosure Two duties, and the second one reaches documents nobody sent you. Read the Authority AI tools before the Office No new rules for AI, and no relief from the old ones. Read the Authority Foreign-applicant representation If your applicant lives abroad, a registered practitioner has to sign, and the penalty is not a fee. Read the Authority 2024 access reforms Three 2024 rules changed who may appear before the Office and on what terms. Read the Authority

What These Pages Do Not Decide

  • Whether particular information is material, or whether a specific inquiry was reasonable. Materiality is defined by reference to patentability, which makes it a legal conclusion.
  • Whether any firm's AI practice complies, including ours.
  • Whether a particular applicant must use a registered practitioner, or whether a filing is defective.
  • Whether anyone is eligible for the design patent practitioner bar.

Educational, not legal advice. We publish this corpus with AI assistance, which is a reason for more care on the AI guidance page rather than less. It reports what the Office said; it does not present our own workflow, or anyone else's, as compliant.

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