We’ve talked about patents a lot recently and one of our main points has always been that the best place to address patent quality is at the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). The USPTO plays a key role in promoting innovation by granting quality patents.
The USPTO is a “fee for service” organization, meaning they get their funding not from appropriated taxpayer dollars but by the fees paid by people applying for a patent or trademark. By law, the USPTO cannot charge you more for services than it costs to perform them. Therefore when the government starts syphoning money from the USPTO to other agencies (like they were doing during sequestration), the USPTO does not have the money to provide the services you are paying for.
This funding problem can clearly be seen in the report released by the Inspector General of the Department of Commerce, who has oversight over the USPTO. The report showed that the increase in requests for continued examination–which is what you ask for when your patent has been rejected– has caused serious backlog in the process. While the USPTO has significantly increased the size of their workforce, it is not enough to keep up with demand. Further, lack of funding means lack of training for new examiners, something the report identified as a cause for the increase in requests for continued examinations.
This report is a step in the right direction to ensure that the USPTO can provide the timely services they are paid for. We urge the USPTO to continue internal adjustments to reduce backlog and we support bills like Senator Feinstein’s Patent Fee Integrity Act to prevent fee diversion from the USPTO.