The chart below shows patent application status for published utility patent applications as of Oct 27, 2019 grouped by patent application filing date.
From the chart – About 95% of patent applications filed Nov 2014 (5 years ago) have been disposed-of (either issued or abandoned). Those 5% remaining are likely to be associated with an appeal or multiple RCE filings.
Nearly five years of extremely consistent numbers brings to mind two quick points:
1) does this somehow take into account a natural bias to “low ball” the abandonments, as abandonments of applications with non-publication requests remain unpublished, and
2) if extended backwards in time to before the Office ‘attempt at quality’ with the Reject, Reject, Reject era — in which the Office proudly boasted driving the allowance rate into the low 30 percent range — magnify the disparity of that era?
Yes,the Dudas era was exceptional, but even its created-pendency backlog looks gone?
Since applications with non-publication requests are a small percentage of all applications, and many are presumably in low-tech art units with faster turnarounds, it would seem unlikely that they would significantly affect these statistics, even though those from independent inventors may well have higher abandonment rates.
Do not issued divisionals and true continuations or CIPs from abandoned applications make [actual] abandonment numbers ever lower?
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