No claims for pending applications or publications
September 1st, 2010 — sateeshH.R.5980 is a bill introduced on July 29, 2010 by US government. The Bill proposes the exclusion of claims and full text specification for the pending applications i.e until the patent application gets granted you cannot view the claims. USPTO will only publish abstracts for the publications or pending applications and no claims will be published. This change may impact the ability to monitor competitors’ pending applications.
See Sec-C in the bill(H.R.5980).
Also read here for more information.