In 2011, the USPTO issued a record number of utility patents – just shy of 225,000 issued patents.  My indicators are that the 2012 figure will be around 6–10% greater.  On April 3, the USPTO issued 5,176 utility patents — once again a new record and fully 200 more than the previous record set in March of this year.

USPTO Director Dave Kappos took office in August of 2009.  The record number of grants on a single day prior to that was 4,418 – set in 1999 under the leadership of Q. Todd Dickinson who heads the the AIPLA.

9 thoughts on “

  1. 9

    As for issued patents tracking filing, patent filing is immaterial to allowances. The reason is because of the backlog. If a single patent application wasn’t filed in the next couple of years, there would still be plenty of work to keep the USPTO busy. The patent backlog acts as a buffer to any decrease (or increase) in filings.

    The key is that despite the patent backlog, issuances dropped dramatically when Dudas hit town. The BPAI tightened up, and the BPAI backlog shot up like a rocket as examiners stopped allowing applications.

    All one has to do is look at all the rule promulgations that Dudas attempted during his reign to see how “patent unfriendly” his administration was. Everything proposed on his watch would have made it more difficult to applicants to get
    This sound odd. I found http://www.conocopianolamps.com very interesting. If you check it.

  2. 8

    Excellent, excellent post Ron. You summarize the issue nicely.

    And these “record patent” posts are not helpful to anything in our society or economy other than the anti-patent trolls.

  3. 7

    There is a rather infamous (I believe is was Doll) graph produced during the heyday of the Dudas near perfect quality march that showed the jistorically steady state allowance rate dropping from 70% to 40%.

    Flip that chart, and you have themirror images of the incrasing backlogs in any of the other measured backlog areas: new applications, RCE’s, new applications with RCE’s, and appeals. Account for the natural time processing, and the graphs are a dead on match.

    No one has ever put forth a cognitive reason why allowances would drop through the floor (and then return to historical levels when Kappos eliminated the “quality = reject” mindset (and that is an actual quote!).

    Thus, the cold hard facts are directly attributable to the anti-patent regime of Dudas and company.

    Sorry blahwoof, but there is no other explanation.

  4. 6

    “Anyone have any stats which clearly show that the increase does not simply track the increased rate of filing in recent years?”

    Some things to consider:

    link to patentlyo.com
    link to patentlyo.com
    link to patentlyo.com

    As for issued patents tracking filing, patent filing is immaterial to allowances. The reason is because of the backlog. If a single patent application wasn’t filed in the next couple of years, there would still be plenty of work to keep the USPTO busy. The patent backlog acts as a buffer to any decrease (or increase) in filings.

    The key is that despite the patent backlog, issuances dropped dramatically when Dudas hit town. The BPAI tightened up, and the BPAI backlog shot up like a rocket as examiners stopped allowing applications.

    All one has to do is look at all the rule promulgations that Dudas attempted during his reign to see how “patent unfriendly” his administration was. Everything proposed on his watch would have made it more difficult to applicants to get patents.

  5. 5

    tired Duda bashing is nonetheless deserved Dudas bashing.

    Poor baby Dudas lover.

  6. 4

    “We all know that the recent increase in patent issue rate is […tired Dudas bashing…]”

    Anyone have any stats which clearly show that the increase does not simply track the increased rate of filing in recent years?

  7. 1

    We all know that the recent increase in patent issue rate is a reflection of the cumulative effects of the important corrections in the Office’s examination practices since Director David Kappos took over. It is a result of a large backlog of applications that were delayed under the practices of the previous administration. The USPTO now appears to be on the correct path. While these welcome corrections are numerous, perhaps the most important one is the balancing of quality measures with the adoption of an examination quality metric that evaluates erroneous final rejections. It now appears that examiners are no longer measured predominantly based on erroneous allowances – a biased quality metric that distorted incentives and led to the “reject, reject, reject” mentality. That mentality was driven by the oft-used term “patent quality” – strictly a term addressing allowance errors because rejected applications are not patents; a patent must have been issued for its quality to be evaluated. Vocabulary manifests the cultural problem.

    The fact is that erroneous final-rejections of meritorious applications harm the public interest at least as much as erroneous allowances (see a simple proof of this proposition in Slides 24-31 at link to bitly.com). Therefore, both errors should be minimized and the quality term used should be “examination quality;” it is unbiased between allowance and rejection and correctly identifies the problem: examination (not patents).

    Director Kappos has launched the USPTO on the correct path for which he should be commended. However, we would know that the Office’s practices and culture are safely on track only when it stops declaring in its Annual Report: “Strategic Goal 1: Optimize Patent Quality and Timeliness” and instead declares “Strategic Goal 1: Optimize Examination Quality and Timeliness.”

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