(a) All notices, receipts, refunds, and other communications relating to payment or refund of maintenance fees will be directed to the correspondence address used during prosecution of the application as indicated in §1.33(a) unless:

(1) A fee address for purposes of payment of maintenance fees is set forth when submitting the issue fee, or

(2) A change in the correspondence address for all purposes is filed after payment of the issue fee, or

(3) A fee address or a change in the “fee address” is filed for purposes of receiving notices, receipts and other correspondence relating to the payment of maintenance fees after the payment of the issue fee, in which instance, the latest such address will be used.

(b) An assignment of a patent application or patent does not result in a change of the “correspondence address” or “fee address” for maintenance fee purposes.

(c) A fee address must be an address associated with a Customer Number.

[49 FR 34725, Aug. 31, 1984, as amended at 69 FR 29878, May 26, 2004]