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Tag: patent application delay

  • Featured Idaho Patent: Strap Winder

    U.S. Patent Number 8,205,818 – Strap Winder

    Every Tuesday, the United States Patent and Trademark Office publishes newly granted patents. This blog post is part of a weekly series in which I pick an interesting new patent that has Idaho connections and briefly describe it.

    Inventors: Joseph Paul Gonzales (Chubbuck, ID), Donna L. Gonzales (Chubbuck, ID), Fernando B. Gonzales (Pocatello, ID)

    This invention can be used to wind cargo straps or cords. After cargo straps have been unsecured from cargo on trucks or trailers, the straps may commonly be left on the ground, which is generally dirty and therefore bad for the straps. The winder can be worn (slots on the chest plate can engage with a belt or harness) for added convenience.

    One interesting thing about the prosecution of this patent is that the patent was allowed only 11 months after the application date, which is unusually fast. A quick examination of the patent file history shows that the applicants filed a petition to make the application special, which was granted. In this case, the petition was made on the basis of age (one of the applicants is over 65 years of age).

    Link:

  • How to Accelerate Examination of your Patent Application

    The United States Patent Office prioritizes certain application types. The USPTO’s priorities are manifest in its “Petition to Make Special” program, which will be described in this post. The Petition to Make Special is a program that allows patent applicants to get special status and skip ahead of other applications waiting in line–the result being that the “special” application can issue as a patent much quicker than it otherwise would.

    Normally, when a patent application is assigned to a USPTO examiner, it is placed at the back of the line, and will only be examined after all preceding applications have been examined first. If a patent application is “made special,” it essentially bypasses the other applications so it can be examined sooner.

    Conditions to be Made Special

    The relevant laws provide that if certain conditions are met, a patent application will be made special–and no fee is required from the patent applicant. Under other specific conditions, the application could still be made special, but the applicant would be required to pay a fee.

    No Fee Required

    The following types of conditions will allow the applicant to petition to make special without needing to pay the fee:

    • The applicant is 65 years of age or more;
    • The applicant has failing health (i.e., might not be available to assist in the prosecution of the application if it were to run its normal course);
    • The invention will materially enhance the quality of the environment;
    • The invention will materially contribute to the development or conservation of energy resources;
    • The invention is directed to superconductive materials themselves as well as to their manufacture and application; or
    • The invention will materially contribute to countering terrorism.

    Fee Required

    Under the following circumstances, the applicant may petition to make special but would be required to pay a fee (as of the date of this post, this fee is $130):

    • The invention relates to recombinant DNA research (due to the “extraordinary potential benefit for mankind”);
    • The invention contributes to the diagnosis, treatment or prevention of HIV/AIDS or cancer;
    • The applicant has a prospective manufacturer that is prepare to begin manufacturing the invention but will not manufacture, or will not increase present manufacture, unless certain that the patent will be granted;
    • There is an infringing device or product actually on the market; or
    • The invention relates to biotechnology applications and the applicant qualifies for small entity status.

    How and When to File a Petition to Make Special

    To file a petition to make special, a patent applicant fills out a simple form and files it with the USPTO for the corresponding application. Any fee and supporting documents, if required, are filed at the same time. The petition to make special can be filed electronically through the USPTO’s Electronic Filing System.

    A petition to make special may be filed at any time. Generally, it is advantageous to file it when the application is first filed (or soon after) since the whole point is to speed up the application process, and the application process will not be accelerated until after the petition is filed.

    Statistics Regarding Special Applications

    The USPTO has a goal of reaching final disposition of the patent application within one year of filing. Past data show that on average, applications made special are first examined roughly 4 months after the filing date. (Compare this number to an average of about 28 months for non-special applications.)

    According to data provided by the USPTO, approximately 60% of petitions to make special are granted. The USPTO generally grants or denies a petition within two months after it is filed.

    Other Ways to Speed Up the Application Process

    The USPTO previously accepted patent applications claiming certain environmentally-friendly technologies into its Green Technology Pilot Program, which gave special priority to those applications. However, the USPTO has now reached its quota and is no longer accepting petitions under this pilot program. It remains to be seen when (or if) the USPTO will bring back the Green Technology Program.

  • The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office's Backlog Prediction Model

    A couple of years ago, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office released its Patent Pendency Model (PPM) Simulation Tool, a spreadsheet that outputs the predicted total number of unexamined patent applications in inventory at the end of each fiscal year and the predicted ratio of first actions compared to filings (a number which shows if/how much the patent application backlog has been reduced that year). I thought it would be interesting to compare the predictions to the USPTO’s actual performance over fiscal year 2011.

    The USPTO has used similar models since the 1980s, but only recently has it made any such predictions public. The model includes results through 2016. The main inputs into the model are: current patent application backlog, number of patent examiners, examiner productivity, and predicted number of patent filings. The most useful outputs (to a practitioner, at least) are the pendency numbers–how long, on average, it will take for an applicant to receive both his first office action, and how long until the application will issue as a patent. (The “ideal” application backlog for the USPTO is 10 months–or with the current examiner workforce, around 290,000 applications in the queue.)

    Backlog

    The model predicted that at the end of fiscal year 2011 (end of September), the UPR patent application backlog (defined as the total number of unexamined utility, plant, and reissue applications–design patent applications are not figured in) would be 632,647 applications. This prediction was based on a predicted 456,344 application filings during the year.

    In reality, according to the USPTO Performance Dashboard for September 2011, there was a backlog of 669,625 patent applications at the end of September, with a total of 505,557 UPR applications filed in FY 2011. Thus, even though patent application filings exceeded the expectation by about 10%, the resulting application backlog was only 6% greater than expected.

    Pendency

    The model predicted that the fourth quarter first office action pendency (the time from application filing to the USPTO’s first office action) would be 20.8 months, with a total pendency (time from application filing to final disposition of the application) would be 36.3 months. According to the Dashboard, pendency during the fourth quarter was 28.0 and 33.7 months, respectively. Thus, first office action pendency was 35% higher than expected, while total pendency was 7% percent lower. The USPTO has set goals of 10 and 20 months, respectively, for first office action pendency and total pendency.

    Looking Forward

    For the upcoming year, the model predicts that backlog will continue to decrease year-to-year until 2016, when it will hover around approximately 350,000 applications (a ten-month inventory for the anticipated workforce of almost 5500 examiners) and pendency will decrease to 8.9 months (first office action pendency) and 18.8 months (total pendency). Whether these lofty goals can actually be met remains to be seen. It may be helpful to see that the pendency numbers have not improved over the previous three years.

              

    Links:

  • Accelerated Examination for Green Technology Patents

    The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s Green Technology Pilot Program allows patent applicants to petition for accelerated examination if their patent application deals with “environmental quality, energy conservation, development of renewable energy, or greenhouse gas emission reduction.” The USPTO recently announced that under this pilot program, it has now allowed 500 patents.

    According to the press release, the average time until the first office action issues has been 68 days after the filing date of the green technology petition. The USPTO release also indicates that “in many instances, applicants have had their Green Technology inventions patented in less than one year from the application filing date.”

    The USPTO will limit this pilot program to only 3,000 granted petitions on a first-come, first-served basis. As of October 3, 2011, it has granted 2,518 petitions–so less than 500 slots in the pilot program are still available.

  • USPTO August 2011 Patent Examination Performance Overview

    The USPTO has released its performance “Patent Dashboard” for the month of August, 2011. The dashboard is a webpage showing numerous metrics related to the PTO’s patent application backlog, pendency rates, quality scores, and other data.

    The dashboard is a measuring stick for the USPTO’s patent quality measurement procedures (how the USPTO started measuring its own examination quality in 2011) and lets the public see vital stats such as application pendency.

    Among the stats, the dashboard shows that the average time for the USPTO to mail a first office action was 28.2 months after the application was filed. This number is slightly up from last month’s pendency time of 27.8 months.

    The numbers also show that the average total pendency (time from application filing until the patent issues or the application is abandoned) in August was 33.7 months–up from 33.5 months in July. The PTO’s stated goal for total pendency is 20 months (to be achieved by a target date of 2015).

    In 2011, the fastest technology group at the USPTO, in terms of mailing out the first office action, was the Biotechnology and Organic Chemistry Tech. Group, with an average time after filing of 23.8 months. The Chemical and Materials Engineering Tech. Group came in second place at 26.1 months. The slowest technology group, the Computer Networks, Multiplex Communication, Video Distribution, and Security Tech. Group, mailed first office actions an average 34.3 months after the filing date, with the Communications Tech. Group coming in second-to-last at 32 months.

    Link: http://www.uspto.gov/dashboards/patents/