March Dashboard Overview
Special Guest Blog by USPTO Commissioner for Patents Bob Stoll
The dashboard for the month of March has been released and is ready to be viewed on our website. Despite the uncertainties associated with this year’s funding, we continue to make steady progress toward our goals.
Traditional First Action Pendency increased to an average of 25.3 months in March. This uptick, from 24.5 last month, was expected since we are working to clear up the oldest applications from the backlog. The increase will continue until these cases are removed through our Clearing the Oldest Patent Applications (COPA) initiative. You can expect to hear more about COPA pretty regularly. We continue to see great progress on the number of first actions on cases older than 16 months. At the end of March there were 197,583 such cases. Meanwhile, Traditional Total Pendency decreased from 34.0 months in February to 33.9 months in March.
The Preliminary UPR filing data through March shows that 248,209 applications have been received this fiscal year. Last year at this time 232,468 applications had been received and current projections predict a 4.9% increase in filings this fiscal year over FY 2010. Meanwhile, the backlog of applications awaiting first office action by examiners decreased this month to 708,912. Finally, the allowance rate increased to 46.2% in March, which is 2% higher than this time last year.
Thanks, as always, for your support and I look forward to your feedback.
Posted at 06:52AM Apr 15, 2011 in patents | Comments[1]
Posted by Inventor0875 on April 28, 2011 at 09:46 AM EDT #