Likely PTO budget for FY2020 (starting Oct 1, 2019) is $3.45 Billion. 2.4% increase over FY2019. As in years past, the spending is limited by PTO collections — it cannot spend more than it collects.
Appropriations, 2019.................................... $3,370,000,000 Budget estimate, 2020................................... $3,450,681,000
80 million more to be collected…?
I have to wonder how much (a? any? substantial?) drop in the maintenance fees are impacting collections.
It really should come as no surprise that decisions to NOT pay the increasing advanced maintenance fees may be adversely impacted by an “anti-patent” court sentiment.
Note that this is NOT a “Gregism of if you are innocent than you don’t need those protections” question.
This is merely a more pragmatic “patents were obtained earlier, and there current (and project future) value — regardless of any actual validity or enforceable ‘validity’ — natural effect.
I would imagine that in the Office calculations, there is some estimate of drop-off of payments. This blog occasionally presents graphs of how many patents have seen payments made at each of the three windows.
Given that some entities refuse to engage in certain areas (and Cleveland Clinic immediately comes to mind), I can easily envision reassessments being made of already obtained patents.
I also have to wonder (given the increasing costs for each successive ‘window’), what the perturbation sensitivity is for various levels of maintenance fee payment percentages. As some may be aware, the maintenance fees actually charged are purposefully set outsized to any actual costs as an offset to not charging full examination (and perhaps other, like PTAB) costs. It should be noted that is in the aggregate that the Office must be a “zero-sum game.”
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