Intellectual Property Law

More from this month’s “Advanced Patent Law Institute” at the USPTO:  John Love, the USPTO’s Deputy Commissioner for Patent Examination Policy, and Hon. Michael Fleming, Chief Adminstrative Patent Judge of the Board of Patent Appeals and Intereferences, presented some interesting statistics:

• the allowance rate for U.S. patent applications has declined from over 70% in 2000 to just above 50% in 2007;
• requests for continued examination have increased 10-fold in the past 5 years;
• the number of appeals filed after final rejections almost doubled between 2006 and 2007 (from 1357 appeals in filed 2006 to 2511 filed in 2007).

Most patent applicants will not go through the expense of filing an appeal unless they truly believe that their case has merit.  So how often are appeals successful?   (more…)