Posts Tagged: "pto budget"

USPTO diverting fees internally to subsidize PTAB trials

In prepared remarks Director Lee said the Office must significantly raise Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) fees in order for the PTAB to be self-sustaining on a going forward basis. On one hand the fact that Director Lee acknowledged that the PTAB is not self-funding is significant, but her comments dramatically under played what seems to be really happening at the PTAB. The reality appears to be that patent owners and patent applicants are subsidizing the PTAB… [I]t seems the PTAB has been operating at a substantial deficit for some time and even with significant fee increases the Office continues to plan to run PTAB trials at a deficit, which means patent owners and patent applicants will be subsidizing the PTAB and infringers challenging patents moving forward. To call this outrageous is an understatement.

Trump FY 2018 budget cuts $1.5 billion from Commerce, how much will come from the USPTO?

With a proposed budget of $7.8 billion and $1 billion in cuts to identify, questions arise about where those cuts will come. Is the USPTO budget safe?Will the cuts be across the board cuts with the USPTO being asked to account for 35% of the $1 billion, which would reduce the USPTO budget to $2.967 billion for FY 2018? According to a chart prepared by the Intellectual Property Owners (IPO) Association, the largest single fee diversion came in 2011 when $209 million was diverted from the USPTO. If the USPTO must cut its budget by some $350 million that would far and away be the largest single year fee diversion in the history of the U.S. patent system.

USPTO diverts funds to Commerce Department as user fee increases are prepared

In a shocking revelation, Frank Murphy, Acting Chief Financial Officer, explained that the USPTO has been and will continue to make payments to the Department of Commerce under the shared services initiative, which is now known as “enterprise services.” Not only are these payments to Commerce potentially (or perhaps likely) in violation of the America Invents Act (AIA), but they are being made at a time when the USPTO is suffering revenue shortfalls and is preparing to increase user fees. According to Murphy, the final fees rule will be submitted to the Administration soon, with fee increases likely by September.

Kasich, Patents and the Middle Class

What Kasich doesn’t explain, however, is how he achieved a balanced budget. As part of the Kasich-Clinton deal the budget of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) was raided for additional money to help plug shortfalls elsewhere. The appropriations cap placed on the USPTO for fiscal year 1998 was $691 million, and according to the IPO $199 million was collected but diverted, which means 22.4% of fee collections were taken from the USPTO in FY 1998 and used for other purposes… Republicans, including Kasich, love to lay claim to the Reagan legacy. But President Reagan was a supporter of the patent system. He never would have tolerated raiding the USPTO budget for any reason. We know that because it was President Reagan that demanded a build up of the USPTO as part of his overall strategy to make America great again and compete with the Japanese for technology dominance.

House Bill Seeks to End Diversion of Fees from the USPTO

The Innovation Protection Act, one of the lesser known patent bills percolating in Congress over the past few years, would provide a source of permanent funding for the USPTO. The fees the USPTO collects would remain available to the USPTO until expended. This common sense idea has been floated for years, but it never seems to go anywhere. Appropriators have been unwilling to commit to allowing the USPTO to keep user fees, diverting $1 billion worth of collected fees from the USPTO according to the Intellectual Property Owners Association. This may not seem like much but is a lot of money, but for an agency the size of the USPTO it is a lot of money.