USPTO Patent Grants

The USPTO appears headed toward another record breaking year in 2011 — issuing more utility patents in 2011 than in any prior year. I project that the PTO will issue about 225,000 utility patents by the end of the year, slightly more than last year’s record number of just under 220,000.  The vast majority of patents issued this year claim priority to at least one earlier patent document such as an international patent application (PCT), US provisional application, or prior US utility application.

PatentlyO121

Data is here.

15 thoughts on “USPTO Patent Grants

  1. 15

    I’d like to see the % that claim provisional priority as opposed to foreign or familial priority.

    It’ll be really interesting to watch that change in 2012 (AIA reaction).

  2. 14

    “Dennis, please identify the culprit and ban.”

    QQ QQ

    Sock puppets don’t get protection … haven’t you learned yet that Dennis doesn’t care?

  3. 13

    With all due respect, MM, the comment at 9:32 may well just have been from you for all the rigor attached – see the comment at 12:32 for confirmation.

  4. 11

    The USPTO appears headed toward another record breaking year in 2011 — issuing more utility patents in 2011 than in any prior year.

    The increase in patents is surely due to the fact that unemployed Americans have so much more time to stay at home and invent things.

  5. 9

    Also assuming a genuine question, or rather, supplying a genuine confirmation would be a particular stat of how many patents are issuing on RCE applications, that – without subtantive amendments – would indicate that the Office has been jerking around applicants, riding the RCE Gravytrain or otherwise putting the “NO” in inNOvation under past regimes.

  6. 8

    Assuming a genuine question [one never knows in comments on this blog] one likely relevant reason for so many U.S. patents issuing with priority claims to earlier applications [or from paid continued prosecution] is that the USPTO has lately been conducting a concerted program to get to its longer-pending applications, which is mainly such cases.
    Another reason for the relevance of this reported fact is that U.S. applications that will be filed under the new AIA version of 102(a)(1), and publish or issue, will have prior art dates, not just priority claims, from their foreign application filing dates. I.e., roughly half of published U.S. applications and patents will have one year earlier prior art dates, and those dates can no longer be sworn behind either.

  7. 7

    So families are “important”, are they Dennis? In what way “important”? You begin to remind me of Margaret Thatcher’s notorious remark “No such thing as society: there are only individuals and families.”

  8. 6

    my only point is that patent families continue to be increasingly important.

    It’s a good point, and I’m sure it’s the case, but it would be more directly supported by excluding patents claiming back to only a US provisional (and, if possible, only to an abandoned parent). I don’t know whether your data will allow you to do that.

  9. 4

    I wonder what comment does Dennis hope to draw from readers, with the inclusion of his last sentence?

    I wonder that too. We already know that most filers are foreign and lots of domestic filers claim back to at least a provisional. If it was meant to imply that these are mostly continuations of issued patents, I’m not getting that at all.

    I could see it being relevant if the data were presented based on filing date or priority date (e.g. time-to-issue graphs), but that’s not the case here.

    Oh well, the important thing is that we’re past the nearly-record-breaking-but-not-quite apocalyptic horror that was the previous PTO administration.

  10. 3

    I wonder what comment does Dennis hope to draw from readers, with the inclusion of his last sentence? Is the “vast majority” somehow fishy? Is he saying that coming on the back of an earlier filing enhances the prospects of early issue?

  11. 2

    Sob

    What a m0r0nic comment.

    Because using the patent system is sooo bad. Yet another example of the deep insight afforded by the typical MM post.

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