Patent Law

Goals:

• A significant reduction in patent pendency periods and the existing patent inventory backlog; improvement in patent quality; enhanced intellectual property (IP) protection and enforcement; global IP policy leadership; and investment in information technology (IT) infrastructure and tools to achieve a 21st Century system that permits end-to-end electronic processing in patents and trademark IT systems.
• Achieve 3 percent annual efficiency gains in patents processing through the re-engineering of management and workflow processes.
• Initiate a targeted hiring surge and hire 1,000 patent examiners annually during FY 2011 and FY 2012. This effort will target former patent examiners and IP professionals who will require minimal training and can be productive virtually from the start of their employment.
• Further details on the USPTO's five-year strategic plan will be released in the second quarter of 2010 as they become available.

  Fees:

• The administration is proposing an interim fee increase on certain patent fees which is estimated to generate $224 million.
• The administration continues to support granting the USPTO fee-setting authority as a significant part of a sustainable funding model that would allow the director to propose and set fees in a manner that better reflects the actual cost of USPTO services.

• "[I]t will be interesting to see how the Office goes about finding 1,000 former examiners and IP professionals to hire. Like the Office's targets for pendency and backlog reduction, it seems pretty ambitious. Still, there's certainly nothing wrong with aiming high."