http://www.mentor.com/dsm How the U.S. Patent Office’s New Patent Rules Affect You

Sweeping changes to the United States patent process go into effect on 1 November 2007. The new patent rules, published in August in the Federal Register by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and known as the Claims and Continuations Rules, are intended to deal with a massive application backlog and patent quality problems. Some of the patent rule changes, including a new patent rule that limits the number of claims you can include in your patent application, apply retroactively to pending applications that have not yet received a first Patent Office action on their merits.