Arrangement of application elements.

§ 1.77 Arrangement of application elements. (a) The elements of the application, if applicable, should appear in the following order: (1) Utility application transmittal form. (2) Fee transmittal form. (3) Application data sheet (see § 1.76). (4) Specification. (5) Drawings. (6) The inventor's oath or declaration. (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: (A) A “Computer Program Listing Appendix” ( see § 1.96(c)); (B) A “Sequence Listing” ( see § 1.821(c)); or (C) “Large Tables” ( see § 1.58(c)). (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. [65 FR 54668, Sept. 8, 2000, as amended at 70 FR 1823, Jan. 11, 2005; 77 FR 48820, Aug. 14, 2012; 78 FR 11055, Feb. 14, 2013; 86 FR 57047, Oct. 14, 2021; 86 FR 73985, Dec. 29, 2021; 87 FR 30817, May 20, 2022]