Patents Still Issuing Patents Despite No Wall Funding: USPTO operating status during government shutdown

Patent

The USPTO has indicated that it “remains in normal operating status” despite the Federal Government funding crisis.

The USPTO remains open for business as normal. This is possible because the agency has access to prior-year fee collections, which enables the USPTO to continue normal operations for a few weeks. Should the USPTO exhaust these funds before a partial government shutdown comes to an end, the agency would have to shut down at that time, although a small staff would continue to work to accept new applications and maintain IT infrastructure, among other functions.

The patent system may be helping with the Border Wall. Consider the following:

  • U.S. Pub. No. 20180273288 — directed toward border wall or fence is constructed from a plurality of existing ISO steel shipping containers which are connected together both horizontally and vertically at their corners using conventional corner locks so as to present a continuous physical barrier of any selected length. (Note the 4th floor golf cart).
  • U.S. Pub. No. 20180313200 — directed toward an underground wall that also detects “enemy” tunnels.

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11 thoughts on “Patents Still Issuing Patents Despite No Wall Funding: USPTO operating status during government shutdown”

  1. 6

    I can report that the FCC appears to continue to be operational, at least to the extent of renewing some licenses.

    73

    … -.-

  2. 5

    This line is interesting:

    Should the USPTO exhaust these funds before a partial government shutdown comes to an end…

    Anyone have any any idea of the extent of those funds, and the duration of the PTO’s tread-water period?

    I’m also curious if the PTO has an advantage in the timing: large companies typically have a rush of new filings at the end of the year to meet their annual filing projections. The PTO might have received a surge of fee payments that enable it to levitate for an additional week or two.

  5. 2

    RE: U.S. Pub. No. 20180313200 — directed toward an underground wall that also detects “enemy” tunnels. I wonder if the examiner will find the prior art on WWI “counter-mining” mining sound detection tunnels?

  6. 1

    I feel safer from the invading brown hordes knowing that America’s Finest Innovators are on the job. More sensors would help! Especially sensors that can detect illegal Mexicans. Maybe throw in an array of guns or lasers attached to a machine learning processor, and a robot to do any clean up orcapture. Keep our boys out of harms way!! Could be self operating and profitable, even. Live stream everything to a subscription website running some dynamic integrity control algorithms. Weatherproof the whole thing using material from recycled plastic bags.

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