USPTO brings average patent pendency under 24 months
The total average patent pendency time at the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has dropped to 23.8 months, in line with the office’s 2018-2022 Strategic Plan.
In a blog published yesterday, October 9, USPTO director, Andrei Iancu, said the agency’s had met its goals to drop pendency times to under 15 months for first office actions and under 24 months for total pendency, on average.
Average times for first action pendency have fallen to 14.7 months.
“This achievement marks the USPTO’s lowest first action pendency since January 2002, despite total application filings nearly doubling in that time, from 353,000 in 2002 to 667,000 in 2019,” Iancu said.
He credited the achievement to improved analyses and a more streamlined application process.
“At the patent examining level, supervisors and examiners undertook and implemented complex data analyses to better prioritise applications and balance workloads without sacrificing quality.
“At the application processing level, the team focused on increasing efficiencies to accelerate the overall patent examination process,” Iancu said.
Iancu said this also led to a big decrease in the average processing time for an application amendment from 26.2 days to 6.8 days on average.
“And, of course, we increased the examiner ranks and we improved examiner training so that today the USPTO boasts the best examining corps anywhere in the world,” he added.
The director said the office had now been set the goal of reducing the first office action time to 14 months.
Did you enjoy reading this story? Sign up to our free daily newsletters and get stories like this sent straight to your inbox.
Today's top stories:
North Korea begins accession to WIPO’s GI treaty
Full Colour Black lawyer dismisses Banksy’s ‘sham’ shop
California winery sues competitor for trademark infringement
