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The Role of USPTO Dysfunction in the US's Economic Decline

FederalWorker — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 19:02:00 GMT

The truth of the matter is that during the Dudas-Doll Era, some USPTO managers began to accept and deliberately facilitate a future where the jobs and industries of tomorrow will take root beyond US borders. The initiation of a "rejection culture" at the USPTO where many of the quality metrics and measurements were non meritorious has had the effect of bringing to fruition the current present of US economic malaise. During the Dudas-Doll Era, attrition of patent examiners was encouraged in large part by a "rejection" culture and quality review culture that too often was dependent on non-meritorious rejections and quality review measures which bottled up innovation, by permitting patent applications reviewed by patent examiners to languish. During the Dudas-Doll Era, as a result of mismanagement, the poor quality work of some patent examiners was often deliberately overlooked, while other patent examiners' work was often saddled and targeted with non meritorious quality reviews. During the Dudas-Doll Era, innovation, and inventors' patent applications were sacrificed and given second fiddle to the goal of perpetuating a culture at the USPTO, where poor quality work was deliberately overlooked by some USPTO managers, while other patent examiners' work was deliberately obstructed with inappropriate and non meritorious quality reviews. The damage that these Dudas-Doll Era Quality Review measurements wrought in terms of languishing patent applications is still being felt today in the decrease in maintenance fees. The USPTO's own FY 2009 Performance and Accountability Report (Source: USPTO's website), states that maintenance fees are the largest source of fees collected from patent operations, comprising over 80% of fees generated from patent operations; the FY 2009 Performance and Accountability Report states that maintenance fees decreased 2.7% from FY 08 or by $15.1 million, decreasing at all 3 stages of maintenance fee renewals. Since maintenance fees are due on all utility patent applications filed on or after December 12, 1980 at 3 and half years, 7 and a half years, and 11 and a half years from issuance, the fall in maintenance fees is attributable to the fall in issuance in patents by the USPTO which occurred at least 3 and a half years ago; since the majority of maintenance fees are traditionally collected at the first and second stages of renewal, the majority of the fall in maintenance fees are attributable to the actions of the USPTO during the past 8 years preceding FY 09.

At the Independent Inventor's Conference, USPTO Director Kappos States that the USPTO is Struggling

FederalWorker — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 04:47:00 GMT

During the Independent Inventor's Conference which took place at the USPTO on November 5, 2009, USPTO Director Kappos, stated that the USPTO is struggling. Click here to read Director Kappos's remarks on the USPTO's website. He stated: "But the truth is; the USPTO is struggling; it’s not working efficiently for inventors—corporate or independent. When the USPTO doesn’t work, ideas—whether born on the high plains of Africa, a garage in Hoboken, a research facility in Raleigh or a dorm room in Berkeley—falter." His comments seem to be in direct contrast to former USPTO Director Dudas's recent comments, which appeared to ignore the role of a faltering USPTO in stifling the American economy, and instead, blamed the faltering economy for the USPTO's current woes. I believe that the crux of the faltering of the USPTO is attributable to initiatives such as second pair of eyes reviews, initiated during the Dudas era, which permitted patent applications to languish as a result of mismanagement. The suppressed allowance rates which dipped below the 50% level in recent years, is also a result of applications languishing and mismanaged quality review programs, in my opinion.

Former USPTO Director Jon Dudas coauthors article which blames the USPTO's Funding Woes on the Economy

FederalWorker — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 04:32:00 GMT

Former USPTO Director Jon Dudas, is a co-author in an October 26, 2009 article entitled, "Let the PTO Pay It's Own Way", which appeared in the National Law Journal. The article appears to deny any role of mismanagement under the Dudas regime, in causing the USPTO's funding shortfalls.
    The article with Mr. Dudas as a coauthor, even attributes comments to the new USPTO Director to support the assertion that the economy was responsible for the $200 million shortfall that exists at the beginning of fiscal year 2010, stating:
"Kappos warned that the economic crisis has caused a downturn in patent application filings, issuances and maintenance fee payments that will cause a $200 million shortfall for the PTO in Fiscal year 2010, which will hamstring the agency's ability to uphold its
mission."
    However, the article fails to mention that the new USPTO Director, unlike the former USPTO Director Jon Dudas, made a clear connection between the dysfunction of the USPTO and the stifling of innovation.
    For example, in his remarks to the AIPLA, Director Kappos stated: "The backlog of nearly 800,000 patent applications is unacceptable; it stifles innovation and restricts the growth of our economy."
    I explored in a previous blog entry how the former USPTO Commissioner of Patents, John Doll, in my opinion, also seemed to adopt the viewpoint, that the economy, and not a dysfunctional USPTO, was responsible for the USPTO's funding crisis.
    Mismanaged quality initiatives initiated under the former USPTO Director Jon Dudas, exacerbated the patent backlog, depressed allowance rates to below the 50%, and contributed to a drop in maintenance fees.
    When allowance rates dropped to below the 50% level well before the start of the current recession, as illustrated by the USPTO's own graph, one would expect, that this precipitous drop in allowance rates would contribute to a drop in future maintenance fee collections.
    Yet the article, "Let the PTO Pay It's Own Way", ignores the connection between the precipitous drop in allowance rates and declines in maintenance fees.
    Several USPTO official emails provided to the public through FOIA, show that patent applications undergoing the dysfunctional quality review programs during the Dudas era, were permitted to languish as a result of mismanagement. Click here to read of an email, wherein patent applications reviewed under quality initiatives during the Dudas era were permitted to languish as a result of mismanagement.

USPTO Quality Review is Dysfunctional says USPTO Director Kappos at the 2009 AIPLA Annual Meeting

FederalWorker — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 16:47:00 GMT

Director David Kappos stated in his remarks to the 2009 Annual Meeting at the American Intellectual Property Law Association (AIPLA), that the USPTO's Quality metrics, quality review process, and quality reward systems are "all dysfunctional and backwards".  These comments can be heard here in an audio recording on the AIPLA's website of the Director's remarks, but are not available in the printed version of the remarks available on the USPTO's website. The new USPTO director also stated that a USPTO task force is working in conjunction with the Patent Public Advisory Committee (PPAC) to "completely re engineer our quality metrics, our quality review process, and our quality reward systems." Click here to read these remarks posted on the USPTO's website.  He also reiterated that "Quality does not equal rejection".
    The USPTO Director also stated in his remarks to the AIPLA, that "The backlog of nearly 800,000 patent applications is unacceptable; it stifles innovation and restricts the growth of our economy."
    This blog has been stating for some time that the USPTO's quality review metrics, quality review process and reward systems are dysfunctional due to mismanagement; I will go even further to say that the USPTO's quality review systems are key drivers of the USPTO's unprecedented suppression of allowance rates and budget woes which were birthed in the Dudas/Doll era of the USPTO.
    At the June 2009 PPAC meeting, USPTO officials reported that the USPTO faced a funding shortfall of approximately $140 M.
    The USPTO Director David Kappos recently stated at the September 14, 2009 IPO Annual Conference, that the USPTO is entering fiscal year 2010, with a budget shortfall that now stands at $200 M, which "puts into question the agency's ability to address its mission at any acceptable level". Click here to read the Director's remarks at the USPTO's website. The Director further states that as a result of the USPTO's budget woes, there will be "probably no progress in cutting into the backlog."
    During the Dudas/Doll years, the USPTO's quality review systems caused patent applications that endured 'quality review" to languish; and the languishing of these applications was due to USPTO mismanagement. Click here to read an official USPTO email procured under FOIA, where a USPTO official laments the fact that USPTO management permitted patent applications reviewed under the second pair of eyes quality review program, to languish.
    During the Dudas/Doll years, quality review was characterized by a rejection culture where managers forced certain examiners to put misguided rejections into their work; these same managers overlooked actual errors in the work of other examiners.
    The USPTO's dysfunctional quality metrics, quality review process, and quality reward systems have exacerbated the backlog of patent applications, stifled innovation, restricted the growth of the US economy, and contributed to the USPTO's current budget woes.
    Despite the paradigm of USPTO management during the Dudas/Doll era, of expending an inordinate amount of USPTO fees in hiring significant numbers of newer examiners, while simultaneously, seeking to purge the organization of some of the older examiners, this graph that I've generated and posted below, shows that there is very little significant linear correlation between expenditures for personnel (most of which went to costs associated with new hires) and increase in actual patent compliance rates. The graph below shows that only 33 % of the variation in actual patent compliance rate percentages between fiscal years 2005 and 2008 is due to increases in direct personnel services and benefits from 2005 to 2008. I believe the fact that a significant portion of the USPTO's fees were expended in Direct Personnel Services and Benefits, yet only weakly correlated, linearly, with improvements in actual compliance rates, represents a part of the waste of fees that has occurred, contributing to the current budget woes at the USPTO.

The Number of Patents Granted in years 2002 to 2008 by the USPTO for Wisconsin falls

FederalWorker — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 02:10:00 GMT

The above graph was generated from the USPTO's own data on its' website, which shows a dramatic decrease in the number of patents granted for the state of Wisconsin from years 2002 to 2008. The graph indicates a dramatic plunge that spiked in 2005, a year after controversial, and mismanaged quality initiatives began at the USPTO, where patent applications subjected to some of these programs such as the second pair of eyes programs were permitted to languish. This above graph showing the steep decline in patents granted in Wisconsin is particularly relevant in light of the two part series written in the Milwaukee Wisconsin Journal Sentinel, which chronicled how the USPTO's dysfunction harmed Wisconsin inventors. An editorial written in that newspaper about this series' findings, stated that if the deficiencies of the USPTO are permitted to continue, these deficiencies would "threaten to meet any gains made in U. S. research with obstruction and delay, doing serious damage to the driving force behind much of the inventiveness these days." It is my belief that the evidence will show that the dramatic fall in patent grants in Wisconsin is due in large part to the mismanaged quality review programs which resulted in an anti-patent rejection culture that characterized the Dudas-Doll era. Other papers such as the Voice of San Diego are also reporting that the USPTO's long delays in granting patents harmed local inventors. Click here to read the story in the Voice of San Diego entitled, "The Long Wait for Innovation". While patent issuances were being held up, and delayed, by mismanagement at the USPTO during the Dudas-Doll era, Japan surpassed the US in patent grants in 2007. Click here to read the article.

Secretary Gary Locke expresses outrage at USPTO's Patent Pendency times and states that the USPTO Needs to be Overhauled

FederalWorker — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 00:40:00 GMT

In a recent article published in MSN's "Business in the Main", Secretary Gary Locke expresses his outrage at the USPTO's long processing times for patent applications. He says: "Quite frankly, the Patent and Trademark Office needs to be overhauled. I find it absolutely outrageous and unacceptable for the time it takes before we can even get a look at a patent application. We call it a "first action" and it can take more than two years. And then it may take another year for patent approval or rejection. This stifles innovation and creates too much uncertainty in the marketplace. It is my goal to dramatically revamp and streamline patent processing time." Click here to read Secretary Locke's comments.

Mismanagement during the Dudas Era, has significantly contributed to the long processing times of patent applications. For example, a USPTO official states that USPTO management permitted patent applications reviewed under the second pair of eyes review program to 'languish". Click here to read the USPTO Official's comments in a USPTO email obtained through FOIA.

We, the public, don't know if some USPTO managers have destroyed some of these emails in a bid to cover up mismanagement. There is one email, (click here to read), that has been shown here at this blog before, of a USPTO manager ordering USPTO workers to "throw away" second pair of eyes lists, that would shed light into the USPTO's patent operations regarding the second pair of eyes program.

In his September 14, 2009 remarks to the Annual IPO Conference, USPTO Director David Kappos, states that the USPTO is facing approximately a $200 Million shortfall in funding because of the downturn in filings, issuances, and maintenance fee payments. Click here to read the text of Director Kappos's address.

As I've expressed here at this blog in previous entries, I believe that mismanagement during the Dudas era, which severely suppressed allowance rates, and hence suppressed maintenance fees, has greatly contributed to the funding shortfall.

I also believe that a significant portion of the USPTO's funding has been whittled away to fund one office within the USPTO's Office of General Counsel, that was charged during the Dudas era with defending USPTO mismanagement and waste.

Where was the March on Washington when the USPTO took our country Back (wards) under the Dudas Regime with Malfeasance, Mismanagement and Expansion of Big Government at the PTO?

FederalWorker — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 19:28:00 GMT

  Beginning in or around 2004, the futures of current and unborn generations were being snatched away by the USPTO, when the USPTO began to contribute to the unraveling of this country's economic picture by stifling innovation and consequently, saddling current and future generations with unsustainable debt. When the seeds of this grand theft were planted, where was the great hue and cry and the March on Washington? Where was the March on Washington on the basis of charges that the USPTO was undermining capitalism with its laying waste to innovation? Where was the March on Washington, DC - when the USPTO's General Counsel, (in my opinion), used at least one of his offices, to defend USPTO mismanagement and stifling and waste of innovation? Where was the March on Washington, when USPTO managers made some of their patent examiners put erroneous and misguided rejections into their office actions, and meanwhile, overlooked poor quality work in the work of other "favored" patent examiners not on "hit lists for removal". Where was the March on Washington when inventor applicants and other members of the public have been forced by the USPTO to expend an inordinate amount of resources defending themselves against bogus claims from the USPTO with little recourse against these bogus claims?
     Since FY 04 and before this year's hiring freeze, the patent examining corps was expanded at an unprecedented rate with the hirings of thousands of new patent examiners, even while the USPTO was using hit lists for removal of patent examiners. These "hit lists", euphemistically known as "Second pair of eyes lists" were used by some in USPTO management, in an arbitrary, and unmeritorious fashion to unjustifiably purge the patent corps of certain examiners for reasons that were unrelated to merit principals and fair play. This expansion of "big" government essentially remade the patent examining corps into a corps containing a significant number of newer, more inexperienced examiners, who needed to be trained by the USPTO and to a large extent, could not issue the level of output of patents as their colleagues with higher seniority and productivity goals. The expansion of the patent examining corps was done under the pretext of addressing the need to reduce the patent application backlog and improve patent examination quality. However, the expansion of the corps arguably actually frustrated these goals, because the retention of these new examiners did not improve; meanwhile, public monies were being spent to train these thousands of new examiners, approximately half of whom could not be retained at the USPTO. Furthermore, a newer, more inexperienced patent examining corps has not resulted in substantial increases in patent examination quality or any reduction in patent application pendency. Patent application pendency actually increased as hiring of new patent examiners also increased.
       During the Dudas Era, the USPTO also expanded its managerial ranks in an unprecedented fashion, creating a layer of Deputy Assistant Commissioners, to reward some managers who oversaw the unprecedented mismanagement of the USPTO and laid waste to innovation. Where was the March on Washington against this harmful expansion of "Big Government" at the USPTO?
         Do we truly want a country, where a true meritocracy reigns, merit principles are applied, and scientific inquiry and knowledge and innovation are promoted and respected? Or do we want a USA where illusion is propagated by public officials about meritocracy, where transparency with regard to governmental operations is thwarted- and where patent applicants are unfairly and unjustifiably denied a patent or obstructed from timely patent prosecution due to USPTO mismanagement, favoritism and lack of observance and appreciation of true merit principles at the office?

After Unprecedented drops in Allowance rates and maintenance fees, the USPTO announces Mr. John Doll's Retirement

FederalWorker — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 03:51:00 GMT

The USPTO announced today a Senior management shakeup, including the retirement of Mr. John Doll, who was most recently, Acting Director of the USPTO. Click here to read the USPTO's announcement. Mr. Doll is retiring after overseeing dramatic and unprecedented decreases in allowance rates and maintenance fees. Several stakeholders in the patent community appear to have attributed a mismanaged, and wasteful anti-patent culture, to Mr. Doll's management and tenure as Commissioner and Acting Director at the USPTO. For example, click here and here to read of one blogger's perspective at the Patent Prospector blog, about mismanagement at the USPTO, when Mr. John Doll was in Senior Management. I wondered if I detected dissatisfaction with Mr. Doll's latest performance in Senior Management in Director Kappos's swearing in speech last month at the USPTO, when he stated, "And I especially thank John Doll for his service leading the agency for the latest 7 months. Thanks, also, to the former directors who are here today. I look forward to working with you in my new capacity. " The import of this last statement is not readily apparent from the text of the speech (click here to read the text of Mr. Kappos's swearing in speech available on the USPTO's website) but, if there is any special, subtle meaning to the statement "Thanks also, to the former directors who are here today. I look forward to working with you in my new capacity..." one may catch the nuance of it when listening to the cadence of the speech here:

which is posted on the Anticipate This Blog. I have expressed before, that I agree with the general sentiment and opinion, that Mr. Doll presided over unprecedented mismanagement and waste of innovation during his tenure as Commissioner and Acting Director at the USPTO.

Sharp Rise in Ex Parte Appeals at the USPTO Seen as Beginning Right around Fiscal Year 2004

FederalWorker — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 12:56:00 GMT

Above is a graph of the number ex parte appeals received from fiscal years 1997 through the first 9 months of fiscal year 2009. This graph was generated from data culled from the USPTO's website. The graph shows a sharp increase in ex parte appeals beginning well before FY 2009, in or around fiscal year 2004, when it is believed that a sharp suppression of allowances inappropriately began, with new so-called quality initiatives. Attorneys have been quoted in the media as attributing the rise in appeals to extreme and misguided rejections from the USPTO. Click here to read National Law Journal Article about the spike in appeals at the USPTO and click here to read one of my blog entries, which references this topic of the relationship between a spike in appeals and a mismanaged anti-patent culture at the USPTO, whose genesis is based in the Dudas Era.

There is one Office within the USPTO's Office of General Counsel which is a Huge Source of Governmental Waste

FederalWorker — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 02:27:00 GMT

Want to know what is driving a significant portion of the USPTO's unprecedented funding shortfall to the tune of over $100 million whose roots were sown in the Dudas era beginning in or around FY 2004? In addition to lack of maintenance fees resulting from the USPTO's suppression of allowance rates, and drops in filings of patent applications, is the USPTO's Office of General Counsel's vigorous defense of some of the USPTO's mismanaged policies and paradigms that have led to these unfortunate occurrences. Essentially, innovation and meritocratic principles have been sacrificed by one of the offices within the USPTO's Office of the General Counsel since at least FY 04, which has placed a premium in using public dollars to defend waste, loss of innovation, and mismanagement. In my opinion, a prodigious amount of public monies have been expended by this one office within the USPTO's Office of General Counsel in defense of programs such as the second pair of eyes program and other mismanaged programs which increased patent application pendency and the patent application backlog. I'm convinced that an investigation into the expenditures of this one particular office within the USPTO's Office of General Counsel will reveal a vast waste of public monies in the defense of unmeritocratic, wasteful, and mismanaged policies, (such as aspects of the second pair of eyes program) which have harmed innovation, inventors, and the American economy. I will even go as far as to say that this Office within the USPTO's Office of General Counsel is confiscatory of public monies in its defense of mismanagement, waste, loss of innovation, and unmeritocratic principles. I believe that a complete overhaul and reform of this one particular office within the USPTO's Office of General Counsel that has been responsible for expending public monies in defense of mismanagement and waste of innovation, will be indispensable to the recovery of the USPTO's fiscal health and fulfillment of its intellectual property mission. The overzealous dysfunction of this office within the USPTO's Office of General Counsel is essentially a creature of the previous Dudas regime. It is not conventional to think of this particular Office, which I will leave unnamed for now, within the USPTO's Office of General Counsel as "bloated". However, this office is a quintessential example of bureaucracy that has become bloated to defend inefficiencies, waste, and mismanagement in patent operations. While government was being trimmed elsewhere during the past 4 years, the attorney staff within this particular office within the USPTO's Office of General Counsel grew, driving a significant expenditure of public monies in defense of mismanagement, waste of funds and loss of innovation.

A Lower Number of Allowances is not Highly, Linearly, Correlated with Improved Patent Quality in terms of In Process Review Compliance Rates from Fiscal Years 2004 to 2008

FederalWorker — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 03:43:00 GMT

The above graph shows that lowered numbers of allowances are not strongly, linearly, correlated with improvements in patent examination quality as indicated by in process compliance rates from fiscal years 2004 to 2008, but are only slightly negatively correlated with improvements to in process compliance rates from fiscal years 2004 to 2008. The above graph was generated from data available on the USPTO's website in the USPTO's Performance and Accountability Reports. The r2 value, which is the coefficient of determination is only 0.014, which means that 1.4% of the variation in in process compliance rates is due to the number of allowances from fiscal years 2004 to 2008. The r value, which is the correlation coefficient is -0.118321596, which is significantly less than -1 or 1, indicating a weak linear correlation between decrease in allowances from fiscal years 2004 to 2008, and increase in in process compliance rates. The above graph debunks the notion perpetuated by the Dudas regime at the USPTO that lowered allowance rates are necessarily synonymous with improved quality in patent examination practice at the USPTO.

The notion that patent quality is necessarily an outcome of suppressed patent allowance rates, was perpetuated at the USPTO during the Dudas Era by Senior Management Officials, without any supporting graphs, evidence, or any other data showing how patent quality and lowered allowance rates were correlated.

As I've stated before, I believe that the balance of evidence shows that allowance rates were lowered in large part from 2004 to 2008, due to mismanagement which facilitated the languishing of patent applications, and the proliferation of misguided and extreme office action rejections.

In a recent post, Blog.IP Scientific Integrity.info posted a graph showing that patent compliance rates were not highly correlated to improved quality. Click here to see the graph. [ In process compliance rates measure patent examination quality before allowance of a patent application, whereas patent allowance compliance rates measure the error rates of allowances of patent applications.]

PatentlyO recently posted a memo on its blog from the new USPTO Director Mr. David Kappos to patent examiners about this issue of lowered allowance rates and patent quality. Click here to read the entry. The Just a Patent Examiner Blog also posted an entry on Director Kappos's memo. Click here to read the entry.

Number of Patents Granted by the USPTO in Rust Belt US States Shows General Trend of Decrease Since 2002

FederalWorker — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 21:14:00 GMT

    The above graph was generated from data available on the USPTO's website and shows that four Rust Belt States, Indiana (IN), Michigan (MI), Ohio (OH), and Pennsylvania (PA) showed a general trend of decrease in patent grants from the years 2002 to 2008. The trend of decrease shows sharp drops for three of the states (Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania) in 2005, which is shortly after new USPTO quality initiative programs, such as the second pair of eyes program were initiated in fiscal year 2004. As I noted on this blog before, USPTO officials admitted that USPTO managers permitted patent applications reviewed under the second pair of eyes program to languish or become withdrawn from issue.

     Senior USPTO managers from the Dudas Era have been quoted as suggesting that lowered allowance rates of patent applications reflect improved patent examination quality at the USPTO. I believe that the allowance rates of patents were lowered due to mismanagement, whereby patent applications reviewed under quality assurance programs were permitted to languish by some USPTO managers, were rejected due to misguided and extreme rejections, and were otherwise obstructed from prosecution and issue through so-called quality initiatives that did not facilitate better quality, but were thought to be instruments of cronyism and favoritism and abuse of merit principals.

    The area of the United States known as the Rust Belt emerged as a primary center of manufacturing industries and includes parts of Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Ohio. The Rust Belt was hard hit by the US's latest recession.

     The decline in manufacturing industries since 2000 has been attributed to the Rust Belt's economic decline. However, some academics, have linked the Rust Belt's decline to the area's number of patents-per capita rather than due to the loss of manufacturing industries.   According to an article in the Toledo Blade entitled, "Ohio Economy Sputters as Innovation Declines", (click here to read the article) some academics have theorized that the story of the Rust Belt is not about vanishing jobs, but about a lack of innovation and therefore, a lack of ideas and industries that were never generated to supplant lost manufacturing industries.

     According to the article, Federal Reserve Economists Paul Bauer and Mark Schweitzer determined that a state's patents- per-capita mattered significantly as an index of a state's economic health and these economists also determined that Ohio's reservoir of patents was the driver of its economy. Click here to see the two economists' study. The USPTO's data on its own website, www.uspto.gov, indicates that most US States experienced a decline in patent grants from 2004 to 2008. Click here to view the USPTO's data on patent grants for US States. I think the above graph is evidence of how the USPTO's mismanagement caused waste of innovation and contributed to economic decline in some of the most economically depressed states in the Union.

Where is the Evidence for Assertions that Low Allowance Rates necessarily are indicative of Better Quality Patent Examination at the USPTO

FederalWorker — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 03:45:33 GMT

An interesting two part article series was authored by reporters John Schmid and Ben Poston and published in the Milwaukee, Wisconsin Journal Sentinel on August 15, 2009. The first article of the two part series, entitled "Patent Backlog clogs recovery - Agency's inability to keep pace undermines American innovation, competitiveness" (click here to read the first article in the series) reports: "As its backlog grew, the Patent Office began rejecting applications at an unprecedented pace. Where seven of 10 applications led to patents less than a decade ago, fewer than half are approved today- a shift that a federal appeals judge termed "suspicious." The same judge calls the agency "practically dysfunctional".

Another interesting quote from the article regards the effect of languishing patent applications on innovation. The article states: "In many cases, applications languish so long that the technology they seek to protect becomes obsolete, or a product loses the interest of investors who could give it a chance at commercial success. " Patents are becoming commercially irrelevant to product life cycles," said John White, a patent attorney and former examiner."

Indeed, the IP Scientific Integrity Watch.Info blog has posted internal emails obtained from the USPTO through FOIA wherein USPTO officials admitted that mismanagement caused patent applications reviewed under a quality assurance program known as the second pair of eyes program, to languish. Click here to view the emails.

The Schmid and Poston article further states "For an American start-up company, a patent application is often the only asset, which creates a Catch-22: Start -ups often need a patent in order to get funding; yet without that funding, entrepreneurs can't afford the mounting fees and legal costs to keep the patent application alive or to fend off infringers."

The Schmid and Poston article then discloses examples of how languishing patent applications at the USPTO have harmed innovation in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The article notes that a startup biotech company, MatriLab Inc., "went belly up in 2007, five years after a patent application was filed for the gel, because no new investors would come aboard as the application languished."

The Schmid and Poston article discloses another example of a company, this time a Virginia company named Merc-Exchange LLC, that was harmed by the USPTO's permitting patent applications to languish. According to the article, MerceExchange went from "more than 40 programmers and engineers at its peak to zero"and sold its patents to eBay because the USPTO had not rendered a decision regarding its patents 4 years after the examination had been reopened in March 2004 by the USPTO.

The Schmid and Poston article quotes another businessman and inventor, Roger Hoffman, who is quoted in the article as stating: "You just cannot get anything through the patent office" ..."You cannot find investors that will wait eight years for patents to issue. Start-ups are risky enough without that." According to the article, Mr. Hoffman waited more than five years for the USPTO to issue a patent on his invention. The article states that the wait rendered Mr. Hoffman's patent useless, because his invention had been copied several times during the wait.

This first article also notes former USPTO Director John Doll, as stating that according to an internal USPTO model, the agency won't catch up with its workload for a half dozen years. In my opinion, mismanagement is largely to blame for this scenario where the USPTO will not catch up with its workload until a half dozen years - because mismanagement permitted patent applications to languish at the USPTO. This mismanagement has led to waste and loss of innovation and destruction of small businesses as exemplified in the Schmid and Poston article mentioned above.

The second article in the series (click here to read the article), states that Chief Justice Paul Michel, of the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, made the comments about the USPTO being "practically dysfunctional".

The second article in the series also quotes Patent Commissioner, John Doll, as stating in an interview with the article's reporters: "If the allowance rate is falling because we're improving quality, that's a good thing" ... "If 100% of the cases that were filed were allowable, if they met the statutes, the regulations and the formal requirements, we'd allow every one."

However, have allowance rates at the USPTO fallen because the USPTO has improved quality? Or have allowance rates fallen at the USPTO for other, unjustified reasons? The IP Scientific Integrity Watch.Info Blog has demonstrated, that it may be dubious to merely assume that a low allowance rate is a reliable predictor of improvements in quality. This blog recently posted an entry about a scatter plot graph of patent allowance error rates versus the number of allowances from fiscal years 1999 to 2008. This blog generated the graph from data obtained from the USPTO's Performance Accountability reports on the USPTO's website. The graph shows a weak negative correlation between patent allowance error rates versus the decrease in allowances from fiscal years 1999 to 2008. The graph shows that as the number of allowances decreased from fiscal years 1999 to 2008, there was only a slight decrease in patent allowance error rates; decreases in the number of allowances from fiscal years 1999 to 2008, were shown to not be strongly correlated in a linear fashion with the slight improvement in patent allowance quality.

If there is valid evidence to back up Mr. John Doll's assertions that lowered allowance rates are strongly correlated with improved patent allowance quality, then I believe that this evidence should be presented to the public.

Otherwise, I believe that innovation has been harmed and wasted when allowance rates are lowered on unsubstantiated basises. As far as I'm aware, no solid evidence has been offered which shows that lowered allowance rates are strongly correlated with improved patent allowance quality; yet allowance rates fell below 50% at the USPTO by mid-year of FY 2009. Click here to view the USPTO's own graph which is available on its website, depicting the severe fall in allowances by mid-year of FY 2009.

The second article in this two-part series also noted that the USPTO underwent a "convulsive shift around 2004 and now turns down well over half" of patent applications. (In my opinion, the current dysfunction of the office is traceable to the previous regime of the USPTO.)

The IP Biz blog also has an interesting entry about second article in this series. Click here to read IP Biz's entry.

Does Decreasing the Allowance rate improve the quality of US Patents?

FederalWorker — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 05:39:00 GMT

According to the graph above, decreasing allowance rates is not strongly correlated linearly with improvements in patent quality. If there are no non-linear equations that reveal a correlation between a decrease in allowances and change in patent quality, then the USPTO's assertions that lower allowance rates equate to higher patent quality is erroneous.

The above graph is a scatter plot graph of the Actual Patent Allowance Error Rates versus the Number of Allowances from fiscal years 1999 to 2008. I generated this graph to test the assertion from the USPTO, that the drastic drop in patent allowance rates necessarily is indicative of better patent examination quality. Regarding fiscal year 2007 performance, a USPTO press release states, that "the USPTO's focus on internal quality controls is primarily responsible for the lowered grant rate over the past several years." In an April 3, 2008 New York Times article (click here to read the article), the former USPTO Director Jon Dudas was quoted as stating: "We are getting more and more unpatentable ideas, worse and worse quality applications. Historically, in the last 40 years, the allowance rate — the percentage of applications ultimately approved — hovered around 62 percent to 72 percent. It went up to 72 percent in 2000, but dropped to 43 percent in the first quarter of this year.”

The USPTO began in or around fiscal year 2004, to equate lowered allowance rates with increased patent quality. The USPTO definition of quality seemed to be merely an unfounded and unsubstantiated assumption. On what basis, did the USPTO correlate low allowance rates to higher quality? Did the USPTO seek to lower allowance rates using as a pretext - an unsubstantiated and unproven assumption that lower allowance rates are synonymous with higher quality patents?

The above scatter plot graph shows that there is very weak linear correlation between actual patent allowance error rate and the number of allowances between fiscal years 1999 to 2008. As the number of allowances have declined from fiscal years 1999 to 2008, the patent allowance error rate only weakly declined and is weakly linearly correlated. The r2 value which is the coefficient of determination is 0.1557 as is indicated in the graph, which means that only 15.57 percent of the variation in the patent allowance error rates from fiscal years 1999 to 2008 is due to the change in the number of allowances from fiscal years 1999 to 2008. The r or correlation coefficient is -.394588, which is indicative of a weak, not strong, linear correlation between the patent allowance error rate and number of allowances between fiscal years 1999 to 2008.

    The USPTO lowered patent allowance rates below 50%, the first time in approximately 30 years, as a result of new so-called quality initiatives.  Quality initiatives such as the second pair of eyes program, resulted in patent applications languishing due to mismanagement.  Some members of the public have also noted that the new quality initiatives at the USPTO have also been the source of extreme and misguided rejections which suppressed allowance rates. The Second Pair of Eyes Program flagged patent examiners' work for scrutiny, even when a clear problem was not found and correction found to be necessary regarding a given patent examiners' work quality. See the memo from a USPTO Director obtained through FOIA. Because of this lack of careful implementation of the USPTO Second Pair of Eyes Quality Review Program, and the generation of a Second Pair of Eyes list wherein USPTO Officials referred to Patent examiners on the list as "Bad People", there was wonderment at the USPTO as to whether the USPTO Quality Review program known as the Second Pair of Eyes Program was being used as an unfounded and unjustified "hit list for removal" of patent examiners.
    An artificially low allowance rate that is unrelated to substantial quality improvements, can unjustifiably lead to an increase in pendency through the filing of RCEs, continuations and appeals.
    Indeed, appeals have starkly skyrocketed as allowance rates have sharply fallen. Click here to see a graph of the change in the number of allowances between fiscal years 1999 to 2008.
    A focus on improving Quality at the USPTO must include a greater transparency on the USPTO's measures of patent quality. However, a USPTO manager, for example, thwarted the goal of transparency regarding the USPTO's quality control measures, when he ordered the destruction of documents that would have shed light into USPTO Quality control measures. Click here to read the email obtained from the USPTO through FOIA, wherein a USPTO manager ordered the destruction of documents used in USPTO Quality control programs.
    I think the above graph can also be a piece of the evidence of mismanagement of USPTO's quality control measures which resulted in waste due to increased patent application backlogs and pendencies. If improvement in patent quality is not strongly correlated to decreased allowance rates, then utilizing allowance rates as a measure of quality should be eliminated. Scientist Ron D. Katznelson stated in his presentation paper entitled "Much Patent Reform Has Already Taken Place. Any Further Reforms Must be directed at U. S. Patent Office Operations" (click here) that allowance rates at the USPTO should be eliminated as a proxy for patent quality. In this paper presentation, Mr. Katznelson also states that USPTO measures of Quality are "distorted".

More Spending for Patent Direct Costs Is not a Strong Linear Predictor of Increase in Patent Quality from Fiscal Years 2004 to 2008

FederalWorker — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 05:24:00 GMT

Above is a scatter plot graph generated from data obtained from the USPTO's Performance Accountability Reports from the USPTO.gov website. The graph shows that there is a weak positive linear correlation between actual patent allowance compliance rates and patent direct costs for fiscal years 2004 to 2008 - meaning, that as the patent direct costs have gone up from fiscal years 2004 to 2008, the patent compliance rate weakly increased. The relationship is weak due to the value of r which is 0.7582216 (which is the square root of r2). Correlation r values less than or equal to 0.65 indicate a low positive linear correlation between two variables, whereas correlation r values greater than or equal to 0.90 indicate a strong positive linear correlation between two variables. The r2 value which is the coefficient of determination is 0.5349, means that only approximately 53.49 % of the variation in actual patent allowance compliance rates are explained by the changes in patent direct costs from fiscal years 2004 to 2008 through a linear relationship between patent direct costs and patent allowance compliance rates. Thus, this graph indicates that the amount of patent direct costs between fiscal years 2004 to 2008, is not a strong predictor of patent allowance compliance rates between fiscal years 2004 to 2008. The graph above also seems to indicate that increasing patent direct costs between fiscal years 2004 to 2008, was not a good predictor of whether or not patent allowance compliance rates would increase. Does the above graph indicate that the USPTO is not getting the bang for the buck in terms of patent quality? If the amount of monies spent in patent direct costs is not a strong predictor of improvement in patent allowance compliance rates, then is diverting more monies to the USPTO for its operations the simple answer to improving patent quality? I believe that the above graph is evidence of waste of USPTO funds; the above graph shows that increases in patent direct costs are not good predictors of patent allowance compliance rates between fiscal years 2004 to 2008.mismanagement

Mr. David Kappos has been confirmed as the new Director of the USPTO

FederalWorker — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 21:03:00 GMT

    Mr. David Kappos has been confirmed as the new Director of the USPTO. See the announcements here and here. Click here to read Mr. Kappos's answers to Senator Orrin Hatch's questions particularly regarding patent application pendency, that he answered during his nomination hearing.
     Now that Mr. Kappos has been confirmed as the new USPTO Director, some IP bloggers in the blogosphere have speculated on the fate of Senior USPTO Leaders such as Mr. John Doll, who was the Acting Director of the USPTO and Ms. Peggy Focarino, who is currently, the Acting Commissioner of the USPTO.  One IP blogger, has advocated for Mr. John Doll to leave the USPTO, and for Ms. Focarino to be made permanent Commissioner of Patents.


I would like to note that as late as August 8, 2009, Ms. Peggy Focarino has been quoted in an Inventor's Digest article defending the 2nd pair of eyes review program, and stating that there were no plans at the USPTO to change the second pair of eyes review process. This statement is contrary to what I read on an IP blog several months ago, wherein the
blogger claimed that according to Ms. Focarino, the second pair of eyes program was too resource intensive and would therefore, be discontinued at the USPTO. What is noteworthy is that Ms. Focarino has defended the second pair of eyes review program, despite the admissions by USPTO officials, that this program was an obstruction to timely patent application prosecution and facilitated the languishing of patent applications due to mismanagement.

    Some inventor applicants have expressed their opinions, that the USPTO Quality Review Programs initiated recently since FY 04, have resulted in an anti-patent culture at the USPTO, which saw the allowance rate drop to 41% by mid-year of FY 2009, and saw the dissemination of many misguided and extreme rejections.

    In the Inventor's Digest article, Ms. Focarino alleges that the second pair of eyes program lowered the error rate within the USPTO from 5.3% in FY 04 to 4.6% in FY 05, and she alleges that the error rate declined in subsequent years, without giving any actual figures for those subsequent years. However, USPTO internal quality review measures, such as these, (which many members of the public have come to distrust), do not show a significant increase in patent compliance rates, not even a 2 % increase. The USPTO's own website shows that patent compliance rates only negligibly improved from FY 05 to FY 08 by approximately 1 percent.
    I believe that mismanagement and waste will only be tackled if the USPTO receives new leadership at the Commissioner level as well - in my opinion, the evidence has shown that the senior leadership which has been a holdover from the Dudas Era, has been resistant to combatting waste, mismanagement, and putting the interests of promoting innovation first. This Dudas-created leadership has also used quality as an excuse to permit the perpetuation of waste by some managers who've obstructed patent application prosecution, and to further patent examination practices that violate merit principles and are based on erroneous and extreme grounds.united state patent and trademark office (uspto)

Complaints about problems with the USPTO obstructing patent prosecution with misguided rejections stem back over a century

FederalWorker — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 04:23:00 GMT

An interesting ancient text reveals that inventor applicants were complaining about the issue of the USPTO obstructing applicants from getting their patents with misguided rejections over a century ago. In an ancient book, called Transactions, which is by the American Institute of Electrical Engineers, and published in 1894, an author raises several concerns with the US Patent Office officials obstructing prosecution with misguided rejections. Take a look at these passages here from page 120 and page 121 of the text. For example, on page 120 of the text, the author states: "The more obstruction there is raised in the inventor's way the more wrong decisions to be appealed from the more money the Patent Office will make and when the year is at an end the office will in this way have paid in a surplus to the Treasury of one million or two no matter if most of said surplus is ill earned" ..... "Is the praxis here referred to consistent with the clear fundamental command of the law that no man shall be debarred from receiving a patent for his invention or discovery. The sections of the law not preventing such obstruction but rather favoring it are they consequent with cited fundamental command are they based upon the invariable principles of justice and right which ought to be the desirable aim for all legislatures. Decidedly not I do not mean to say that as long as the law provides for an examination of applications for patents there should be no objections raised but what is undeniable is this that the inventor should not be obliged to fight with the patent officials for what he is entitled to. It should be clear not only from the fundamental command of the law but also from all the subsequent sections thereof that the patent officials have been placed in office not in order to try to defeat the inventor under his endeavors to come to his right but to benevolently assist him under his endeavors"

On page 121 of the text, the author states: "The law should be altered so as to do away with all undue obstruction not only due to inability but also that heretofore experienced from over zealousness of misunderstood duties or from a desire to benefit the Patent Office financially in excess of what is required by law. It needs no demonstration to prove that the present provisions in appeal cases may be construed as a direct invitation to the patent officials to raise in the inventor's way as many adverse decisions as possible in order to cause as many appeal fees as possible to be paid. Nobody argues that adverse decisions should not be made if they are just and qualified and that on the other hand some inventors may appeal from an adverse but correct decision but that the inventor shall pay the appeal fee whether he is right or wrong there is where the injustice comes in. "

These same concerns exist today, over a century later, as noted in previous blog entries here at IP Scientific Integrity Watch.info - however, it appears that the obstruction of the patent process was exacerbated in an unprecedented fashion beginning in fiscal year 2004, with the initiation of new so-called quality initiatives which eventually lead to the allowance rate dropping to approximately 41 % by mid year of FY 09. (This graph is a USPTO generated graph obtained from the USPTO's website.) Applicants have complained about misguided rejections emanating from the USPTO since FY 04, and indeed second pair of eyes review of work was being conducted even when clear errors were not identified and correction found to be necessary. See pages 108-109, of this USPTO memo procured from FOIA, wherein a TC 1600 director states: "We are revising the process to consider only allowance review data, and only those situations when a clear problem is verified and correction is necessary. We are rescinding all lists based on any previous criteria. We apologize to anyone who feels that they were unfairly on the 2nd-pair-of-eyes program based on our previous criteria." As is commonly, known, many patent applications reviewed under the second pair of eyes program languished as a result of mismanagement.

New direction for the USPTO is a needed and appropriate remedy to address the waste, and abuse that has occurred at the USPTO over the past several years.patent backlog

The Significance of fiscal year 2004 in terms of number of Amended actions (utility, plant, reissue), awaiting action by a patent examiner

FederalWorker — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 03:07:00 GMT

The above line graph shows that the number of amended patent applications (utility, reissue, plant) awaiting action by a patent examiner increased steadily from FY 04 to FY 08, but did not increase as steadily from FY 01 to 03. The data used to generate this graph and all of the other graphs mentioned below in this entry, was obtained from the USPTO's Performance Accountability Reports on its website. Another graph, which is a scatter plot of the number of amended applications (utility, plant, reissue) awaiting action by a patent examiner between fiscal years 2001 through 2003, shows, that there is very little correlation in the increase in these types of applications from fiscal years 2001 to 2003. Click here to see the graph, wherein the r2 coefficient of determination is 0.1751, which means that only 17.51 % of the variation in the number of these amended applications shown in the graph is due to the passage of time from fiscal years 2001 to 2003. The r value which is the square root of r2, is 0.4184495, is significantly less than 0.9 and 1, indicating that there is no strong linear positive correlation between the number of these amended applications awaiting action by a patent examiner and the passage of time from FY 01 to 03. Another scatterplot graph, (click here), of amended applications (utility, plant, reissue) awaiting action by a patent examiner from fiscal years 2004 to 2008, have an r2 of 0.9723 and hence an r of 0.9860527, which is greater than 0.9 and very close to 1, indicating that there is a strong positive, linear correlation between the increase in amended applications (utility, plant, reissue) awaiting action by a patent examiner and the passage of time between fiscal years 2004 to 2008. I am guessing that something significant happened between fiscal year 2003 and 2004, to cause this significant change whereby before fiscal year 2004 (between fiscal years 2001 to 2003) - there was no strong positive correlation between the change in the number of amended applications (utility, plant, reissue) awaiting action by a patent examiner over time from fiscal years 2001 to 2003; however, between fiscal years 2004 to 2008, a very strong positive linear correlation is seen in the number of these amended applications and the passage of time. Well, certain versions of the second pair of eyes program began in FY 04 at the USPTO, according to page 106 of an USPTO memo (click here) written by a TC director. This USPTO memo along with other USPTO emails were obtained through FOIA and have been posted here at this blog. Many of these emails show that due to mismanagement, patent applications were permitted to languish as a result of having been reviewed under the second pair of eyes program.patent backlog

Are the number of amended applications awaiting action by a patent examiner in a given fiscal year a good predictor of pendency of patent applications

FederalWorker — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 00:46:00 GMT

Above, is a scatterplot graph of data obtained from the USPTO's Performance Accountability Reports for fiscal years 2004 to 2008, showing that there is a strong positive correlation between the number of amended patent applications (plant, utility, reissue) awaiting action by a patent examiner and pendency of patent applications (utility, reissue, plant). In the USPTO's Performance Accountability Reports, pendency is defined as the average time (in months) between filing and issuance or abandonment of utility, plant, and reissue patent applications.

When one thinks that there is a cause or effect relationship between two variables or a correlation between two variables, one can plot a scatter plot of the two variables to prove or disprove whether or not there is a correlation between the two variables. Here, the scatter plot graph appears to prove that there is a very strongly positive linear correlation between the two variables. The correlation of determination of R2 is 0.9027 which means that 90.027 % of the variation in the pendency of patent applications (utility, reissue, plant) is due to the number of amended (utility, plant, reissue) patent applications, awaiting action by a patent examiner in fiscal years 2004 through 2008. The square root of the correlation of determination R2 is 0.9501 which is close to 1.0. Since r, the correlation coefficient, is greater than 0.90, the correlation coefficient r is indicative of a strong, positive linear association between the two variables for fiscal years 2004 through 2008. The scatter plot shows that one is able to predict the pendency of patent applications (utility, reissue, plant) in a specific fiscal year between 2004 to 2008, by looking at the number of amended patent applications (utility, reissue, plant) for a given fiscal year between fiscal years 2004 to 2008, awaiting action by a patent examiner. So far, this blog, in previous entries (click here and here to see the previous entries), has determined that there is a strong positive correlation between the number of amended patent applications (utility, reissue, plant) awaiting action by a patent examiner and the number of abandoned patent applications (utility, plant, reissue) as well as the amount of unearned patent fees (utility, design, plant, reissue), for fiscal years 2004 to 2008. This blogger believes that this scatter plot graph above could be evidence of the exacerbation of patent application pendency, by mismanaged programs such as the second pair of eyes review program, which permitted amended utility patent applications awaiting action by a patent examiner to languish. patent backlog

Are the number of amended applications awaiting action by a patent examiner a good predictor of how many applications will go abandoned in fiscal years 2004 through 2008

FederalWorker — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 05:14:00 GMT

    The short answer to the question that the title of this blog entry asks is, "yes".
    I want to thank a poster by the name of BruceAhz for his comment to my 7/20/09 blog entry about the graph above. The poster Bruce Ahz alleges that my data is useless because he/she states that I did not normalize my data regarding applications in process. BruceAhz likens the above graph to proving that speeding tickets cause accidents. I disagree with BruceAhz. I checked with a professor of statistics about BruceAhz's point and the professor stated that this graph is meaningful and also stated that normalization would not mathematically change the correlation coefficient or coefficient of determination. The professor stated that the issue here with regard to the above graph is not normalization, but whether the relationship between the two variables is linear. Here, the relationship between the x and y variables does appear to be quite linear as the graph above shows - the r and r2 coefficients being pretty close to 1 also indicate that the relationship between the number of abandoned applications (plant, reissue, and utility) and amended applications awaiting action by a patent examiner (plant, reissue, utility), from fiscal years 2004 to 2008 is quite positively linear. The professor stated that the above graph due to the linear relationship of the X and Y variables is a good predictor of how many patent applications (plant, reissue, utility) will be abandoned in a certain fiscal year as a function of how many amended patent applications (plant, utility, reissue) are awaiting action by a patent examiner.
    Additionally, in my 7/20/09 post regarding the above graph, I did not say that one variable was causing the rise in the other variable as BruceAhz seems to suggest in his comment when he likens the above graph to proving that speeding tickets cause accidents. I merely stated that the coefficient of determination which is 0.913 shows that 91.3 % of the variation in the amount of patent applications (utility, plant, reissue) abandoned in fiscal years 2004 to 2008, is due to the variation in the number of amended patent applications (utility, reissue, plant) awaiting action by a patent examiner in fiscal years 2004 to 2008. I also stated that the correlation coefficient which is 0.95551 - indicates that there is a strong positive linear relationship between the number of abandoned patent applications (plant, reissue, utility) and amended patent applications (utility, reissue, plant) awaiting action by a patent examiner for fiscal years 2004 through 2008. The professor stated that my interpretation is accurate.
    The professor then stated that the graph above may be explained by the X and Y variables - (which are amended applications awaiting action by a patent examiner and abandoned applications, respectively ) each being affected by the change in time from fiscal years 2004 to 2008 rather than the two variables X and Y being a function of one another. The professor also explained that the X and Y variables may simultaneously be a function of time and a function of each other. The Professor encouraged me to generate separate line graphs: one line graph (click here) would be of the change in the number of amended applications (plant, reissue, utility) awaiting action by a patent examiner, from fiscal years 2004 to 2008; the other line graph (click here) would be of the change in the number of abandoned patent applications (plant, utility, reissue) over time as measured from fiscal years 2004 to 2008.  Both line graphs mirror each other. What is evident is that both the number of amended applications (plant, reissue, utility) awaiting action by a patent examiner and the number of abandoned applications (plant, utility, reissue) increase over time, from fiscal years 2004 to 2008. This may be significant because new quality assurance programs which caused many amended patent applications to languish, began in or around 2004.
    Perhaps, what can be concluded from the above graph is that from 2004 to 2008, the number of abandoned applications (plant, utility, and reissue) and the number of amended applications (plant, utility, reissue) awaiting action by a patent examiner, grew. The growth in the number of these types of applications could reflect an increase in a patent application backlog and a growth in abandonment of innovations. I think the above graph, could be evidence to support a conclusion that there has been a growth in waste as reflected in the growth of a patent application backlog and growth in abandoned applications,( with waste occurring in situations where valid, patentable subject matter was abandoned) from FY 04 to 2008. The growth in amended applications (plant, utility, reissue) awaiting action by a patent examiner and the growth in the number of abandoned applications (utility, plant, reissue) as represented in the above graph could be a result of mismanaged quality assurance programs such as the second pair of eyes program which began in or around FY 04 and persisted through this time period.
    If there are other comments, suggestions, or disagreements about the graph above and my interpretation of the data here, please feel free to voice your opinion here at the blog.patent backlog