Current legislative information affecting the USPTO, including testimony before Congress, other relevant congressional hearings on intellectual property issues, USPTO reports, and active IP-related legislation can be found at the links below. For additional information, contact the USPTO’s Office of Governmental Affairs.
Congressional hearings
Hearings concerning the USPTO and intellectual property policy in the 118th Congress.
Recent USPTO studies and reports
Where are U.S. women patentees? Assessing three decades of growth, October 2022
A U.S. county-level analysis of women’s patenting from 1990 to 2019.
Patent eligible subject matter: Public views on the current jurisprudence in the United States, June 2022
This report to Congress summarizes responses to a Federal Register Notice published in 2021 that solicited comments from the public regarding the current state of patent eligibility jurisprudence in the United States since the Supreme Court’s 2016 decisions in Mayo and Alice and subsequent Federal Circuit decisions applying the Supreme Court’s legal framework.
Intellectual property and the U.S. economy: Third edition, March 2022
This report on intellectual property (IP) and the U.S. economy builds on reports published in 2012 and 2016. Using company-level data, it provides an update on the importance of IP-intensive industries to the U.S. economy and offers new details about the demographics of their employees.
Infringement disputes between patent and trademark rights holders and states and state entities, August 2021
This report to Congress summarizes the results of a study the USPTO undertook regarding the extent to which patent and trademark owners experience infringement of their IP by states and state entities. It was conducted at the request of Senators Thom Tillis and Patrick Leahy.
USPTO 2018-2022 Strategic Plan
This four-year plan serves as the roadmap for the USPTO’s future, identifying strategic goals that focus the office’s future efforts on issuing predictable, reliable, and high-quality IP rights; aligning patent and trademark examination capacity with current and projected workloads; modernizing information technology; enhancing the customer experience; promoting IP rights abroad; monitoring and helping address dynamic IP issues in Congress and the courts; maintaining a sustainable funding model; and developing IP policy.
Progress and Potential Update, July 2020
In this report, the USPTO provides an update to trends and characteristics of U.S. women inventors named on U.S. patents granted using new data from 2017 through 2019. It found that although female inventorship rose from 12.1% in 2016 to 12.8% in 2019, women inventors are still severely underrepresented in the patent system.
Adjusting to Alice: USPTO patent examination outcomes after Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank International, April 2020
This report studied the impact of recent actions undertaken by the USPTO to bring greater predictability and certainty to the determination of patent eligibility in the technology areas most affected by the 2014 Alice Corp. v. CLS Bank International U.S. Supreme Court decision. It concluded that uncertainty about determinations of patent subject matter eligibility in the first action stage of patent examination for Alice-affected technologies decreased by 44% over the first year following the 2019 publication of USPTO guidance.
Report to Congress: Study of Underrepresented Classes Chasing Engineering and Science Success (SUCCESS Act report), October 2019
In this report, the USPTO (1) identifies publicly available data on the number of patents annually applied for and obtained by women, minorities, and veterans, (2) identifies publicly available data on the benefits of increasing the number of patents applied for and obtained by women, minorities, and veterans and the small businesses owned by them, and (3) provides legislative recommendations for how to promote the participation of women, minorities, and veterans in entrepreneurship activities and increase the number of women, minorities, and veterans who apply for and obtain patents.
The USPTO issued this report as required by the Study of Underrepresented Classes Chasing Engineering and Science Success (SUCCESS) Act of 2018. More information on the SUCCESS Act can be found on the USPTO’s SUCCESS Act page.
Progress and Potential: A Profile of Women Inventors on U.S. Patents, February 2019
In this report, the USPTO identifies the trends and characteristics of U.S. women inventors named on U.S. patents granted from 1976 through 2016. It found that while female inventorship is rising, women inventors still made up only 12% of all inventors on patents granted in 2016.
