Daily Fact: According to the USPTO’s most recent Official Gazette, the slowest technology center is 3680 – Business Methods with a 41 month backlog from filing to initial office action. The fastest is 1620 – Organic Chemistry with < 18-month delay. An important caveat to these numbers is that it includes RCE reworks which substantially reduce the delay of O-Chem.
If you look at total pendency, and at higher-order statistics and overall distributions of delay, you find that averages alone make the USPTO appear to be performing better than it actually is.
A significant number of applicants experience delays that are significantly above average at all stages of the process. Until the USPTO can improve consistency and reduce variance as well as average performance, it will continue to have a high proportion (on the order of 30%) of “dissatisfied customers”. Some GAUs are doing better than others, so this is not an impossibility.
link to blog.patentology.com.au
Paul Morgan,
You might strike up a conversation with Mark about his comment of:
“In the slowest group, over an eighth of all applications that ultimately issue as patents take more than eight years to do so.”
And that would be just the first wave (let alone any ripple effects of attempted continuations practice)
Also from Mark’s link:
“The worst (perhaps unsurprisingly) include fintech and e-commerce, genetic technologies, and surgical methods and devices.”
The Office politics are clearly in view with this observation. Let’s not forget the Office admission when they publicly pulled the SAWS program, that SAWS was merely one of an undisclosed number of similar “quality programs.
Another interesting tidbit from Mark’s link: a graph that shows that the “best” standard deviation is not less than 11 months across various art units.
That’s abysmal.
the slowest technology center is 3680 – Business Methods with a 41 month backlog from filing to initial office action.
Business methods aren’t “technology”.
Does a degree in accounting or management qualify as a “technical degree” for credential purposes when one is seeking to become an Examiner or patent agent? How about Ph.D. in customer service or marketing?
>>Does a degree in accounting or management qualify as a “technical degree” for credential purposes when one is seeking to become an Examiner or patent agent? How about Ph.D. in customer service or marketing?
It does not.
Banking? International finance? Contracts? Sales?
Eppur si muove
😉
Yes, let’s bring up a phrase describing the motion of the earth around the sun and pretend that it’s relevant to a discussion about whether “new” sales agreements or marketing strategies qualify as technology.
Is “anon”s “argument” that any “thing” — even an abstraction — that is tangentially related to something “that moves” qualifies as “technology” for patenting purposes?
It must be a really deep and nuanced argument. I’m sure it’s very serious! And I’m sure “anon” will give the full detailed argument in just a moment, in English, using direct statements. Let’s all hold our breath.
Where is this “technology” requirement in the law passed by Congress? By some interpretation of the courts?
What? I can’t hear you.
Daily fact: we have a neo-N@ zi-sympathizing white supremacist president.
And if you believe otherwise, you are truly d u mber than a rock.
(Two facts for the price of one!)
But his every utterance is exclusively to maintain his popularity with the base that voted for him, no? What is his personal opinion on any particular issue remains a mystery, right?
What remains a mystery is why more drastic measures are not taken for the type of blight that has resulted in two expungements in the last few days – to the rather apparent indifference of the person who feels that this forum should serve their own political rants.
Max, to most media and most on the left, T is a stereotype. To his supporters, they listen to what he has to say on the issues.
The left still hasn’t come to grips on why they lost.
At first I thought that you were talking about Continuations substantially reducing the delay of O-chem.
Be that as it may, I would be curious as to the relative examiner experience level in the art groups – perhaps O-Chem has a higher percentage of leftover examiners who grew up in the RCE-gravy train days.
As to the Business Methods factoid, this just belies Malcolm’s snideness at link to patentlyo.com
The USPTO dashboard has TC level data which says the average tenure of TC1600 is 12.2 years and the average tenure of 3600 is 8.3 years.
Er, BM has an average tenure of 8.3 years. TC3600 is at 9.9 years overall.
Thanks Ben, not that much of a difference then.
Comments are closed.