Financial Highlights: Statement of Budgetary Resources

 

Statement of Budgetary Resources

The following table displays the USPTO’s total budgetary resources available for spending over the past four years. Also presented are the human resources that the USPTO has employed to respond to the increases in patent and trademark filings. In prior years, the budgetary resources available for spending did not include amounts that were not available through the end of the fiscal year that became available for spending at the beginning of the following fiscal year once apportioned by the OMB.

As evident from the above table, total budgetary resources available for spending increased significantly in FY 2006, a 11.2 percent increase over the prior fiscal year and a 40.8 percent increase over the past three fiscal years. Almost half of the increase in available budgetary resources was used to fund the increased cost of additional human capital to address the growing average complexity of patent applications and the increase in patent and trademark filings.

The increase in available budgetary resources also allows the USPTO to apply additional funds towards the accomplishment of strategic goals and other initiatives that are associated with the performance goals contained in the 21st Century Strategic Plan and the PMA. This year, in support of the overall USPTO goal of reducing pendency, the USPTO successfully competitively sourced PCT prior art searches, classification of patent documents, and patent reclassification functions. Competitive sourcing work in these areas will allow our internal resources to concentrate on other strategic goals and initiatives for more efficient management of our performance goals.

The USPTO fee collections did not exceed the fee appropriation of $1,683.1 million during FY 2006, therefore the USPTO was able to spend all $1,657.6 million of fees collected during the year. The USPTO did not meet planned fee collections primarily due to a decrease in the expected number of claims being filed per application and less issue fee collections due to focusing resources on reducing patent allowance error rates. The reduction in patent allowance error rates resulted from the recent quality initiatives implemented as a part of the continuing emphasis on patent quality. Although less than planned, the FY 2006 fee collections increased 10.7 percent over FY 2005 collections of $1,497.2 million, all of which was appropriated. This increase in collections is due to an increase in patent and trademark application filings, as well as an increase in maintenance fees received.

As defined earlier, temporarily unavailable fee collections occur when the USPTO is not appropriated the authority to spend all fees collected during a given year. During FY 2006, the USPTO did not collect any fee collections that were designated as temporarily unavailable. As a result, the $516.5 million in temporarily unavailable fee collections at the end of FY 2004 remained the same through FY 2006.

The table below illustrates amounts that Congress has appropriated to the USPTO over the past four fiscal years, as well as the cumulative unavailable fee collections.

In addition to these annual restrictions, collections of $233.5 million are unavailable in accordance with the OBRA of 1990, and deposited in a special fund receipt account at the U.S. Department of the Treasury.

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