Patent Office unveils plans to improve its operations

[The Straight Story]

Patent Office unveils plans to improve its operations

By Sarah Lai Stirland, National Journal's Technology Daily
The Patent and Trademark Office on Friday announced three initiatives aimed at improving both the speed of its operations and soundness of its decision-making system.

Officials said the intent is to address the agency's backlog of requests to re-examine patents by revamping the way it handles such requests from patent holders. They also said the office intends to conclude work by the end of this year on all re-examination requests that have been pending for more than two years.

There currently are more than 1,200 such requests, according to statistics provided by PTO. More than 100 of them have been pending in excess of four years, and 420 have been pending for more than two years.

" all the requests that have been with the office for more than two years, we will by the end of the year conclude the processing by the examiner," Joseph Rolla, the deputy commissioner for patent-examination policy, said in an interview about the initiatives.

PTO Director Jon Dudas was scheduled to make the announcement in Chicago on Friday at a town-hall meeting on patent reform convened by the FTC, National Academy of Sciences and American Intellectual Property Law Association.

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