From the USPTO’s website:
“The Stakeholder Training on Examination Practice and Procedure (STEPP) program is administered by the Office of Patent Training (OPT) under the third pillar (Pillar 3, Excellence in Customer Service), of the Enhanced Patent Quality Initiative (EPQI) and is a new and important part of the USPTO’s mission to deliver intellectual property information and education to external stakeholders.
Training delivered through STEPP is designed to provide external stakeholders with a better understanding of how and why an examiner makes decisions while examining a patent application. In person courses are led by USPTO trainers and based on material developed for training employees of the USPTO.
Currently, it is anticipated that courses provided through STEPP will be free to attend. In addition, the USPTO is in the process of determining the applicability of providing CLE credits for attending STEPP courses; however, CLE credit cannot be earned for the first scheduled training session.”
The first scheduled training session is July 12-14 at the USPTO’s campus in Alexandria, VA.
For more information, see the USPTO’s website.