USPTO's Detroit Office Gets a Home

January 12, 2012 - The Patent Office announced that it has chosen a location for its Detroit satellite office, and has signed a five-year lease for space at 300 River Place Dr., Detroit, Michigan 48207.

The new office will be located in a 31,000-square-foot historic building that formerly housed Parke-Davis Laboratories and the Stroh's Brewery headquarters.

The Elijah J. McCoy United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO-Detroit Office) is scheduled to open no later than July 2012.

USPTO to Host Seven "Roadshows" to Educate Public about America Invents Act

January 9, 2012 - The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office announced that it will host a series of "roadshows" regarding the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act. The events are open to the public, and their dates and locations is available here.

“The USPTO hopes that the public will find the roadshows to be an ideal forum to engage with the Office about our various proposed rules implementing provisions of the America Invents Act,” USPTO Patent Reform Coordinator Janet Gongola said in a press release. “The roadshows also give the agency the opportunity to visit members of the patent community in different parts of the country as part of our ongoing effort to create a 21st century patent and trademark office.”

Patent Office Extends Deadline for Green Technology Pilot Program

December 29, 2011 - The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office announced earlier this month that the deadline for participating in the Green Technology Pilot Program has been extended from its original expiration date of December 31, 2011 through March 20, 2012 or until 3,500 applications have been accepted to the program.

The USPTO reports that the program has been a success, with over 2,900 applications already accepted and accorded special "green" status. The average time between the granting of a green technology petition and first office action on the merits of the application is only 78 days.

USPTO Director David Kappos said, “While the Green Technology program will soon draw to a close, in the future all applicants may use the newly enacted Prioritized Examination (Track I) program, which is currently available to all technologies and categories of invention, to have their application accorded special status.”

Guidelines for applying to the Green Technology Pilot Program can be found in the Federal Register.

USPTO's Detroit Satellite Office On Track for 2012; Patent Office Seeks Comments on Other Locations

December 2, 2011 - Congressional budget cuts last spring derailed several plans for expanding and improving the U.S. Patent Office - including indefinitely postponing the opening of a USPTO satellite office in Detroit (see our Wealth of Ideas feature article from May 2011).

The Detroit office is back on track, and is now scheduled to open in the second half of 2012. Not only that, but the Patent Office placed a notice in the Federal Register seeking comments on possible sites for other satellite offices.

The establishment of such satellite offices is mandated by the America Invents Act, Section 23. The USPTO plans to establish at least two more satellite offices (subject to available resources), and the purpose of these additional offices will be to reduce patent application pendency, improve the quality of issued patents and recruit and retain a highly skilled workforce.

Contact information for those wishing to submit comments to the USPTO can be found in the Federal Register notice, and comments are requested on or before January 30, 2012.

USPTO Announces New Small Business Innovation Research Program

November 21, 2011 - The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, following a Presidential Memorandum from President Obama that directs all Federal agencies with research facilities to improve the flow of research from labs to the marketplace, launched a new pilot program last month to help small businesses develop their inventions and secure patent protection.

The Small Business Innovation Research Pilot Program, or SBIR, uses a competitive awards-based program to encourage small businesses to engage in research, development and commercialization. It also provides comprehensive IP support through the USPTO's small business resources and programs.

USPTO Meets or Exceeds Goals for FY2011; Reduces Patent Backlog by 10%

October 24, 2011 - In a bit of welcome news for the IP community, the United States Patent and Trademark Office announced that it has met or exceeded its goals - in both Patents and Trademarks - for fiscal year 2011.

The backlog of unexamined patent applications was reduced to 669,625 at the end of FY2011 - a ten percent decrease since David Kappos became USPTO Director in FY2009. That reduction occurred in spite of the fact that patent application filings have continued to increase by five percent each year.

The corps of examiners processed 257,642 of the oldest pending patent applications through first Office action, exceeding the USPTO's FY2011 goal by more than 20,000 applications.

USPTO to Conduct Two Studies per the America Invents Act

October 18, 2011 - The USPTO announced public hearings for two studies it is required to conduct under the America Invents Act in order to prepare reports for Congress.

The Prior User Rights Study concerns the availability of prior user rights in foreign countries. The study asks participants about their level of experience with prior user rights in foreign countries, the availability of those rights, and whether prior user rights are or are not needed in particular jurisdictions.

The International Protection Study concerns international patent protection in foreign countries, specifically, options for aiding independent inventors and small businesses in securing such foreign patent protection.

The Federal Register includes more information about these studies, for which the USPTO's reports are due in mid-January 2012.

500th Patent Issued through USPTO's Green Technology Pilot Program

October 5, 2011 - The USPTO announced that it issued its 500th patent under the Green Technology Pilot Program, and it is for a “Wind Turbine Rotor Blade with Aerodynamic Winglet” (U.S. Patent No. 8,029,241).

The milestone patent was awarded to General Electric Company, which has obtained 116 patents in all through this program.

The Green Technology Pilot Program was designed to accelerate the review of patent applications related to energy conservation, environmental quality and the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.

Applications accepted to the program involve no extra cost to the inventor for the accelerated review, and many Green Technology applicants have received a patent less than a year from the application filing date.

The Green Technology Pilot Program will be open to new applications until December 31, 2011.

U.S. Patent Office Issues Patent No. 8,000,000

August 25, 2011 - The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office announced that it recently issued its eight millionth patent. The patent covers a “Visual Prosthesis Apparatus” that enhances visual perception for people with impaired vision due to outer retinal degeneration. It was awarded to Second Sight Medical Products, Inc., which holds 90 issued U.S. patents relating to sight restoration for the blind and the correction of various other medical conditions.

Though the Patent Office is notoriously backlogged, it is perhaps a good sign that it took 75 years to get from the first patent to Patent No. 1,000,000 in August 1911 - but just under six years to get from number 7 million to number 8 million.

House Subcommittee Approves Major Boost for USPTO Budget in FY 2012

July 13, 2011 − On July 7, the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice and Science approved a fiscal year 2012 budget for the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office that is a 28% increase over its FY2011 budget. The budget boost is, in part, the result of a compromise that removed the provision from the House version of the America Invents Act (H.R. 1249) that would have ended the diversion of fees from the Patent Office.

Currently, Congress sets a budget for the Patent Office, and the money for that budget comes from the fees the USPTO collects. If the fees the USPTO collects exceed that budget, the overage is appropriated and diverted to other government programs. However, over the past several years, the budget set for the USPTO has been insufficient for growth and expansion − such as opening new offices, hiring more patent examiners and replacing obsolete equipment. With a backlog of as many as 1.2 million unprocessed applications (according to some estimates), ending fee diversion is now seen as a necessity for the American patent system to keep up with demand.

Thus both versions of the America Invents Act (S. 23 and H.R. 1249) initially included a provision to end fee diversion. But while the Senate version passed easily, some House members balked, saying that it would be unconstitutional for one government agency to be able to both set and keep the fees it collects without having to go through an appropriations process.

Fortunately for the Patent Office, the FY2012 funding bill accomplishes much the same thing. Any fees the office collects above the $2.706 billion budget (which includes a new 15% surcharge on all fees) will be available to the Patent Office − but only after the PTO submits its plans for the extra funds and those plans are approved by the two Appropriations Committees of Congress (House and Senate). The difference is that the excised "fee diversion" provision would have made the "excess fees" available to the Patent Office without any such limitations or approval process.

"This additional language in the funding bill is represented by the appropriators as guaranteeing that there will be no diversion," explained Hayden Gregory of the American Bar Association's Governmental Affairs Office.

USPTO Requesting Additional Funding from OMB

June 24, 2011 - GPC Vice President and AIPR Executive Director Alec Schibanoff, while attending a public hearing at the Patent Office on June 1, talked with U.S. Patent and Trademark Office Director David Kappos and newly appointed Deputy Director Teresa Rea. Mr. Schibanoff learned that the USPTO applied to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for additional funding in the expectation that the America Invents Act will be enacted into law.

As readers of the Wealth of Ideas newsletter know, when the Fiscal 2011 Federal Budget was finally passed in April of this year, the USPTO had its budget cut along with most federal agencies. As a result, several programs − the hiring of additional patent examiners, the opening of an office in Detroit and the launch of an expedited patent application program, to name just a few − were put on hold.

US Patent Office to Begin Hiring in April for New Detroit Satellite Office

March 9, 2011 - An article in the Vancouver Sun reveals why the USPTO decided to locate its first satellite location in Detroit, Michigan: the Motor City's high number of unemployed engineers.

"In terms of locations, we looked at Detroit as a pretty rich environment," Peggy Focarino of the Patent Office said. "We're not concerned about having a lack of applicants. Some of them have law degrees or practical experience."

The USPTO is mainly looking for candidates with experience with intellectual property. The jobs have an average salary of about $70,000, and applicants must use the government's job site, USAJobs, to apply.

USPTO Launches Peer Review Pilot Program for FY2011

January 20, 2011 - The Peer Review Pilot Program will run through September 30, 2011. It is the result of a smaller-scale peer review program that the Patent Office used to gauge the value of allowing the public to assist in the identification of prior art during the patent examination process.

That initial program was limited in scope and size, but was apparently a success: "Members of the public, when collaborating in an organized online fashion, are capable of contributing to the location of prior art of value to examiners during the examination process," says the USPTO website.

This year's Pilot Program will include some modifications from its predecessor:

* The scope of the program has expanded from computer technologies and business methods to include patent applications in the fields of biotech, bioinformatics, telecom and speech recognition.
* The number of eligible subject matter classes has also increased.
* Peer review time allotted to search for prior art has been reduced to three months.
* The number of eligible patent applications that can participate has been increased from 400 to 1,000.
* The number of items submitted to the USPTO as prior art was reduced from ten to six.

The New York Law School's Center for Patent Innovations' "Peer to Patent" site will manage the Internet-based review process.

For more information about the Peer Review Pilot Program, see the notice in the Patent Office's Official Gazette.

U.S. Patent Office Joins Patent Offices of Europe and Japan in 28th Annual Trilateral Conference

A recent press release from the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) detailed the topics of discussion at the trilateral conference, which was held in Alexandria, Virginia earlier this month. Leaders of the USPTO, the Japan Patent Office (JPO) and the European Patent Office (EPO) - known as the Trilateral Offices - discussed the concept of "work sharing" as a means of improving efficiency and patent quality.

"Work sharing," or utilizing work already performed by another patent office with regard to the same invention, would allow all three offices to speed up processing of patent applications.

“We are pleased to have made significant advances this week in the area of work sharing among the Trilateral Offices,” said Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the USPTO David Kappos. “We are grateful to our partners at the EPO and the JPO for their commitment to increasing work sharing because it enables us to reduce patent pendency and enhance patent quality for patent applicants around the world.”

Other topics of discussion at the conference included enhancement of IT collaboration, cooperation on patent classification and information sharing.

Read the full news release on the USPTO website

U.S. Patent Office Extends "Green Technology" Program Through 2011

November 12, 2010 - In the October issue of our newsletter, Wealth of Ideas, the feature article ("What's New at the Patent Office?") discussed recent developments at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) - including the Green Technology program.

On November 10, the USPTO announced in a press release that the Green Tech program had been successful enough that it will be extended an additional year, through December 31, 2011. The press release states that "since the pilot program began in December 2009, a total of 790 petitions have been granted to green technology patent applicants, and 94 patents have been issued."

The 790 applications that were accepted into the program are infinitesimal compared to the over 400,000 applications that are filed each year and the backlog of 700,000+ applications awaiting examination, but the speed at which the "Green Tech" patent applications are processed is impressive. According to the USPTO press release, "the average time between the approval of a green technology petition and the first action on an application is just 49 days" and in many cases, the patent has issued within a year - no small feat, considering the average pendency from first filing of a patent application to granting of a patent runs about 5-7 years.

“We’ve seen great results so far for those applications in the Green Technology Pilot Program, so we want to extend it for another year and open the program to additional green inventions,” Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the USPTO David Kappos said in the press release. “By doing so, we hope to help stimulate investment in green technology, bring more green inventions to market, and create jobs.”

Patent Office Director David Kappos Proposes Major Changes to Patent Examination System

October 1, 2009 - David Kappos - whose full title is the Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) - has worked with the USPTO's Joint Labor-Management Task Force to develop a series of proposals that would both reduce the amount of time it takes to complete a patent examination and improve morale among USPTO employees.

According to the Washington Post, the USPTO's staff of more than 6,300 patent examiners completed just under 450,000 patent applications in 2008. The high ratio of applications to examiners often means inventors are frustrated, having to wait more than three years until patents issue, and examiners suffer from overwork and low morale.

Kappos' proposal therefore includes changes (quoted from the USPTO's press release) designed to:
* Set the foundation for long-term pendency improvements.
* Increase customer satisfaction by incentivizing quality work at the beginning of the examination process.
* Encourage examiners to identify allowable subject matter earlier in the examination process.
* Rebalance incentives both internally and externally to decrease rework.
* Increase examiner morale and reduce attrition.

The changes will encourage examiners to put more effort into the examination process on the front end - which will, in turn, lead to a decrease in requests for continued examination (RCEs).

"These proposed changes will lead to earlier identification of patentable subject matter, which will benefit both the USPTO and applicants," said Deputy Commissioner for Patents Peggy Focarino. "Over the long term, we believe these changes will promote quality examination and set a foundation for pendency improvements."

The full text of the proposal is available on the USPTO website.