Patent Law

Yesterday, I posted data about patent application pendency at the US Patent Office. The following comment came from an a longtime partner at a midsized IP botique in DC:

I suppose I'm something of a lone wolf in thinking that the backlog in applications we have now is not much worse (certainly not DRAMATICALLY) worse than the backlog we've had all along, or at least since I've been in patent law.  Your chart shows that 50% of application were disposed of in about 3.5 years and about 90% in roughly 6 years.  When I was an examiner, back in 1990 or thereabouts, there was a lot of verbiage given to getting average pendency to 3 years – so it must have been higher than that at the time.  It would be interesting, I think, to see the same analysis done for application filed one and two decades earlier then those in these charts, plotting all the data normalized to the starting date.   Maybe someone has done this in a meaningful way already; but, I haven't seen it.  If the curves are the curves are substantially the same, it would put the lie to oft heard cries about a burgeoning backlog that's crushing competitiveness and the false impression given by quoting the raw number of applications now pending.