GOAL 1:  Optimize Patent Quality and Timeliness

Introduction

The benefits of our patent system have been obvious to Americans since the founding of our country. More than 200 years ago, the need for a patent system was addressed in the Constitution, and a statutory system to examine and grant patents was put in place. Since that time, the ingenuity of American inventors, coupled with a patent system that encourages and rewards innovation, has transformed America into the world's preeminent technological and economic nation.

Today, economic success depends on intangible, information-based assets, and industries, such as security and nanotechnology, which cut across our traditional economic sectors. As the clearinghouse for U.S. patent rights, the USPTO is an important catalyst for U.S. economic growth. Through the prompt granting of patents, the USPTO promotes the economic vitality of American business, paving the way for investment, research, scientific development, and the commercialization of new inventions. The USPTO also promotes economic vitality by ensuring that only valid patent applications are approved for issue, thus providing certainty that enhances competition in the marketplace.

In order for Americans to reap the benefits of their innovations, they often rely on the legal rights associated with a granted patent. This means that the longer it takes for the USPTO to review a patent application, the longer it will take for an applicant to receive the patent rights that ultimately may be granted for the invention. Congress and the public have recognized this issue—referred to as "pendency," or the time an application remains with the USPTO until a final decision is made—as having a direct impact on American competitiveness.

Implementing the types of changes needed to fully realize the outcomes of a more efficient and effective examination process requires a multi-faceted approach.

Challenges/Opportunities

The increasing number and technical complexity of patent applications, coupled with the challenge of hiring and training new patent examiners, continues to confront the USPTO. The patent application filing rate has increased beyond our ability to promptly examine new and pending patent applications.

Confidence in patent quality continues to be a topic of debate. Determining the appropriate measures of patent quality and the related performance targets, are of critical interest to both the USPTO and the patent community.

Operating in today's wired world requires us to have full electronic processing that is safe, secure, and continually available to employees, applicants, and stakeholders. We must expand the use of information technology to all phases of patent processing.

A longer-term endeavor, critical to addressing quality and timeliness, is working with our stakeholders, the Administration, Congress, and our international partners to determine if there is some combination of examination alternatives that will better meet applicants' needs while providing a more efficient use of USPTO examination resources.

Our Strategic Response

We will hire more patent examiners, train and retain them more effectively, and send them home or to alternative Government work sites; build quality into every aspect of patent examination; fully leverage and expand the potentials of the electronic work environment; and explore the feasibility of offering alternatives to the current one-size-fits-all filing and examination system.

Objective #1:  Provide high quality examination of patent applications.

Initiatives

• Enhance recruitment to hire 1,210 new patent examiners a year for an extended period of time, including examiners with degrees and/or experience in emerging technologies
  
• Expand telework and explore establishing regional USPTO offices
  
• Leverage the effectiveness of the Patent Training Academy to enhance training and create Chief Scientist positions to focus on technical training
  
• Explore partnerships with universities to offer IP courses to science and engineering students, develop an internship program and train students in IP to create a ready pool of potential examiner candidates
  
• Establish a retention bonus program that focuses on retaining examiners with special skills, and experienced retirement-eligible managers and examiners
  
• Develop alternatives to the current performance and bonus systems
  
• Enhance search quality by improving examiners' ability to retrieve the most relevant prior art in the examination process
  
• Enhance the skill sets of examiners authorized to train others by providing formal training to all personnel who are responsible for training new examiners and reviewing their work
  
• Design and implement a comprehensive quality system for patent examination that includes:
  • Collecting and analyzing all quality review information for consistency and to provide feedback and improved training
  • Offering a separate quality award that better recognizes the accomplishments of examiners who meet or exceed assigned quality expectations
  • Conducting targeted reviews in problem areas, which focus on examination processes or functions that show problematic trends
  • Encouraging submission of relevant prior art
  • Conducting an external validation of the Office of Patent Quality Assurance (OPQA) results by having the quality of work independently assessed by third party reviewers using OPQA measures and processes
  • Developing quality measures and performance targets in conjunction with external stakeholders
    
• Transition to a common classification schema based upon the International Patent Classification (IPC) system by working with Trilateral partners (the European Patent Office (EPO) and the Japan Patent Office (JPO)) to align classification systems, and with WIPO to reform the IPC
  
• Support reclassification efforts to improve search quality through increased use of classified searching
  
• Outsource Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) Chapter I applications freeing examiners to focus on national cases
  
• Provide assistance to the open source community in their development of an open source database to provide examiners with potential prior art
  
• Explore examination reform through the rule making process to create better focused examination and enhance information exchange between applicant and examiner
  
• Enhance the Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences' (BPAI) flexibility and accountability by addressing projected jurisdictional expansion and workload increases resulting from continuation reform, pre-appeal brief conferences, and potential post-grant legislation
  
• Enhance registered practitioner requirements by developing a program for Continuing Legal Education, implementing an annual registration fee, and reviewing qualifications to practice before the Office

Objective #2:  Improve and integrate existing electronic systems to promote full electronic patent application processing; implement better/more secure systems.

Initiatives

• Modernize the electronic data processing infrastructure to include a robust text-based electronic patent application file management system
  
• Create a centralized on-line docketing system, which offers better workflow management and allows applicants to modify their application data
  
• Automate the pre-examination search and formalities review by developing an auto office action generator using Natural Language Processing
  
• Initiate a search exploration project to redesign the patent search systems by exploring commercial and public search capabilities and identifying user requirements
  
• Increase E-Filing by overcoming impediments to filing electronically

Objective #3:  Improve the quality and timeliness of patent examination by exploring a range of approaches to examining applications.

Initiative

• Explore the development of alternative approaches to examination in collaboration with stakeholders

Performance Measures

• Applications filed electronically


• Applications managed electronically


• In-process examination compliance rate


• Allowance compliance rate


• Average first action pendency


• Average total pendency


• Efficiency


• Productivity

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