Posts Tagged: "IPO Annual Meeting"

Iancu Updates Users on Filing Stats Amid Pandemic During IPO Annual Meeting Address

In his address to the Intellectual Property Owners Virtual Annual Meeting yesterday, USPTO Director Andrei Iancu said that, despite sharp declines in filings and renewals, COVID-19 seems to have spurred innovation in some areas. “Small and micro entity patent filings are at a historic high, with more than 112,000 filed during the first 11 months of fiscal year 2020,” Iancu said. In an August interview with IPWatchdog Founder and CEO Gene Quinn, Iancu discussed one of the COVID-19 relief programs the Office has instituted to support small inventors during the pandemic. A pilot that offers free prioritization of COVID-19 related patent applications has been working well, Iancu told Quinn, and is expressly geared to assisting smaller entities.