35 U.S.C. § 26
Section 26 · Effect of defective execution
Amended 3 times on record
Applied in 7 court decisions — leading case Dubost v. U.S. Patent & Trademark Office (1985)
Most recently applied in Virginia Innovation Sciences, Inc. v. Samsung Electronics Co. (March 2014)
How often courts cite this section
Court decisions citing this, by year.Markers show enactment, consequential amendments, and circuit splits over this section — watch for a citation surge after a change or a disagreement. The dip in the last several years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so recent citations are undercounted.
Any document to be filed in the Patent and Trademark Office and which is required by any law, rule, or other regulation to be executed in a specified manner may be provisionally accepted by the Director despite a defective execution, provided a properly executed document is submitted within such time as may be prescribed.
Editorial notes U.S. Code · Office of the Law Revision Counsel
Amendments
1999—Pub. L. 106–113 substituted “Director” for “Commissioner”.
1975—Pub. L. 93–596 substituted “Patent and Trademark Office” for “Patent Office”.
Effective Date of 1999 Amendment
Amendment by Pub. L. 106–113 effective 4 months after Nov. 29, 1999, see section 1000(a)(9) [title IV, §4731] of Pub. L. 106–113, set out as a note under section 1 of this title.
Effective Date of 1975 Amendment
Amendment by Pub. L. 93–596 effective Jan. 2, 1975, see section 4 of Pub. L. 93–596, set out as a note under section 1111 of Title 15, Commerce and Trade.