11

IP Section Colorado Bar Association

Robert StollCommissioner for Patents

United States Patent and Trademark Office

22

In Support of Innovation

• President Obama supports: “An innovation agenda must… remove bureaucratic barriers to entrepreneurs by making our patent process more efficient and reliable.”

• Support from Department of Commerce, Secretary Gary Locke who committed, “My top priority for the USPTO—dramatically reducing the unacceptably long time it takes to process patent applications.”

33

Strategic Priorities

• Reduce Patent Pendency and Backlogs

• Improve Quality of Examination

• Improve/Enhance Patent Appeal and Post-Grant Processes

• Demonstrate Global Leadership in all Aspects of IP Policy Development

• Improve Information Technology Infrastructure and Tools

• Secure a Sustainable Funding Model, and

• Improve Relations with Employees and Stakeholders

44

Strategic Goals

Achieve First Office Action on the Merits within 10 months. And reduce overall pendency to 20 months.

Our work has been focused on:

• increasing collaboration and transparency with our stakeholders;

• making changes to processes, policies and procedures; and

• continuing work sharing efforts with global partners.

55

Stakeholder Relationships

Creating a two-way dialogue, and soliciting feedback.

• Providing Information• Directors Blog, webinars and online chats• Independent Inventor Conference, and Inventor’s

Eye publication• Patent Examiner Technical Training Program

(PETTP)• Policy guidelines• Data Visualization Center

• Gathering Information• Roundtables• Public Comment requests

66

Patents Dashboard

77

Reducing Pendency and Backlog

New initiatives that help move applications through the patent prosecution system:

• Enhanced Examination Timing Control – “Three Track”

• Green Tech pilot program

• Project Exchange

• Accelerated-Examination Program

8

Applicant Collaboration

Applicant Collaboration to produce better applications and facilitate issue resolution:

– Ombudsman Program

– Compact Prosecution Training

– First Action Interview Program

9

Applicant Collaboration - Interviews

• Interview Training improved communication skills of our examiners– interview time up nearly 40%– examiners logged 138,222 interview hours in

FY 2010.

• First Action Interview Pilot Program – First action allowance rate over twice that

for all filings

• Applicants embrace the open, collaborative culture change

10

Efficiency Through Process Improvement

• Reengineering Classification system

• Reengineering patent processes

• Patents ‘end-to-end’ IT development initiative

1111

Work Sharing Initiatives

Current Programs:• PPH

• PCT-PPH Pilots

• SHARE-type initiatives:– USPTO-KIPO SHARE Pilot– USPTO & UK-IPO Action Plan for Re-use

• PCT

• IP5 Foundation Projects

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Patent Prosecution Highway (PPH)

• Provides quicker patentability determination in multiple jurisdictions

• Fourteen participating offices

• First Office Actions within 3 months on average (from program acceptance), providing the pre-exam processing has been completed.

• The program cumulative allowance rate is 95.1%,

as compared to 45.6% in FY 2010 for all applications.

13

PPH - USPTO as 2nd Office

First Office Start Date Requests (as of 1 Aug 2010)

JPO July 2006 2606278 (Pilot) 2328 (Full)

KIPO Jan. 2008 507 134 (Pilot) 373 (Full)

UKIPO Sept. 2007 94

CIPO Jan. 2008 33

IPAU April 2008 38

EPO Sept. 2008 54

DKPTO Nov. 2008 39

DPMA April 2009 22

IPOS Feb 2009 1

NBPR July 2009 10

HPO July 2010 0

Rospatent Sept. 2010 0

EPO (ISA/IPEA) January 2010 84

JPO(ISA/IPEA) January 2010 90

KIPO (ISA/IPEA) June 1, 2010 89

14

Total PPH cases

Number of PPH Requests Cumulative

0

500

1000

1500

2000

2500

3000

3500

20

06

.07

20

06

.09

20

06

.11

20

07

.01

20

07

.03

20

07

.05

20

07

.07

20

07

.09

20

07

.11

20

08

.01

20

08

.03

20

08

.05

20

08

.07

20

08

.09

20

08

.11

20

09

.01

20

09

.03

20

09

.05

20

09

.07

20

09

.09

20

09

.11

20

10

.01

20

10

.03

20

10

.05

20

10

.07

Cumulative total

Date

App

licat

ions

1515

PPH and PCT

• PPH is completely complementary to the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT).

• In January 2010, the USPTO, the JPO and the European Patent Office (EPO) began a program that allows participation within PPH of PCT national or regional phase applications when the International Search Authority, or ISA, determines that one or more claims are allowable.

1616

SHARE

SHARE (Strategic Handling of Applications for Rapid Examination) for applications filed in multiple offices:

• Maximize re-use between offices to minimize duplication of examination

• Agencies prioritize and balance workloads to maximize the re-use of foreign search and examination results

• Minimizes duplication of examination work done in other IP offices

1717

IP5 Foundation Projects

• Partnership between: EPO, JPO, KIPO, SIPO and USPTO.

• Eliminates unnecessary duplication of work among the offices,

• Enhances patent examination efficiency and quality, and guarantees the stability of patents rights

• Ten projects consist of IT-supported business processes and examination practice-related initiatives to provide infrastructure for work sharing.

18

Work Sharing Recent Developments

• USPTO and EPO will work together towards the formation of a joint patent classification system

• Korea, Spain and Russia added to the PPH-PCT programs

• USPTO and UK Intellectual Property Office will develop a plan to optimize reuse of work on patent applications that are filed jointly at the USPTO and the UKIPO

1919

Improving Quality

• All Quality measures met our targets in FY 2010.

• Shift resources from the “second-pair-of-eyes” effort to a front end quality program that assists examiners early in the examining phase.

• Five new measures of patent quality were developed through the Patent Quality Task Force study, bringing the total quality metrics to seven.

2020

Conclusions

• Our strategic priorities guide us to the goal of reducing pendency and backlog, and contribute to the improvement of the global IP system.

• The USPTO has launched new initiatives that bring new ways of thinking; an open-minded thinking to our Agency.

• We have embraced transparency and openness because collaboration with our partners and our applicants brings us the insight we need to reach all of our goals.

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Thank You