37 CFR §1.77
Verified against eCFR.gov as of June 20, 2026View official text on eCFR.gov ↗
- (a)The elements of the application, if applicable, should appear in the following order:
- (b)The specification should include the following sections in order:
- (1)Title of the invention, which may be accompanied by an introductory portion stating the name, citizenship, and residence of the applicant (unless included in the application data sheet).
- (2)Cross-reference to related applications.
- (3)Statement regarding federally sponsored research or development.
- (4)The names of the parties to a joint research agreement.
- (5)An incorporation by reference statement regarding the material in:
- (i)One or more ASCII plain text files, submitted via the USPTO patent electronic filing system or on one or more read-only optical discs (see § 1.52(e)(8)), identifying the names of each file, the date of creation of each file, and the size of each file in bytes, for the following document types:
- (ii)An XML file for a “Sequence Listing XML” (see § 1.831(a)), submitted via the USPTO patent electronic filing system or on one or more read-only optical discs (see § 1.52(e)(8)), identifying the names of each file, the date of creation of each file, and the size of each file in bytes.
- (6)Statement regarding prior disclosures by the inventor or a joint inventor.
- (7)Background of the invention.
- (8)Brief summary of the invention.
- (9)Brief description of the several views of the drawing.
- (10)Detailed description of the invention.
- (11)A claim or claims.
- (12)Abstract of the disclosure.
- (13)“Sequence Listing,” required by § 1.821(c), that is submitted as a Portable Document Format (PDF) file (as set forth in § 1.821(c)(2)) via the USPTO patent electronic filing system or on physical sheets of paper (as set forth in § 1.821(c)(3)).
- (c)The text of the specification sections defined in paragraphs (b)(1) through (b)(12) of this section, if applicable, should be preceded by a section heading in uppercase and without underlining or bold type.