Grim Outlook for USPTO

Today's Watch Dog Report in the Milwaukee-Wisconsin Journal Sentinel provides a grim outlook on the state of affairs at USPTO. The article, " Despite efforts to improve, US patent approvals move slower" highlights the impact of long pendencies, budget freezes, attrition and a host of other ills. John Schmid wrote, "...the US wastes at least $6.4 Billion each year in "forgone invention" - legitimate technology ht cannot get licenses and start-ups that cannot get funded because of US Patent Office problems."

The horror stories of patent applications languishing on the floors of examiners offices for years are distressing. When you consider the current political and economic chants about innovation, and research and development; reports that the Chinese want to file a million patent applications by 2015 with a good number of them landing here, an the accelerating pace of the creation of complex technical and scientific documents and no subject matter experts to review all this stuff; PTO seems to be in for a rough ride.

You can read the article at here. Thanks to Greg Aharonian of Internet Patent News Service for passing the report along.

Business Methods Monday - USPTO Update

News from last week's USPTO's Business Methods Partnership Meeting:

Only the patents classified in Class 705 are considered business methods patents.

The allowance rate for applications classified in Class 705 is 23% or put another way 77% are rejected or abandoned.

80% of the patents in this class are tied to a computer.

Pendency to First Office Action is 31.7 months - over 2.5 years.

Pendency to Issue/Abandonment is 46.7 months - almost 4 years.

Through July 2010 there are 312 Examiners focused on business methods patents. Through July 2,100 patents have been granted.

In 2009 there were 1,725 patents granted with an Examiner Corps of 328 examiners.

(Patents up...Examiners down...)

They expect the pace for business methods patent filings to increase both as a result of the resolution of the Bilski case by the Supreme Court and an improving economy.