Posts Tagged: "patent statistics"

There is no way to know for sure whether the applicant could have achieved an allowance had they hung in, but it would have been helpful to know that the examiner was very experienced and likely had decision making authority. Such an observation would have given great insight into the fact that the examiner in question here has an overall allowance rate of nearly 70%. It no doubt would have also been helpful to know that after an interview in over 50% of cases, the next significant event following the interview was an allowance. In short, the statistical data shows that this was an experienced patent examiner who is interested in working with applicants and their representatives to identify allowable subject matter and issue patents where appropriate.

I wrote something incorrect about SPE Len Tran and for that I apologize to him and to the USPTO and to readers who were lead astray. The fact is that if you do a simple Google patent search you will see that since the time he became a SPE in 2008 he has signed many hundreds of patents. SPE Len Tran is not an examiner or SPE that refuses to issue patents. To the contrary, he has issued many patents for a variety of different technologies and seems to be an example of a good supervisor.

As far as I am concerned the problem is not generically with patent assertion entities, or even the likes of entities like Acacia Research, or with patent litigators such as Ray Niro. Both engage in comprehensive due diligence before getting involved with a patent owner, turning away more than 99% of what is presented to them for evaluation. Actors like Acacia and Niro seek to enforce good patents that are widely being infringed. Somewhere along the way society has chosen to vilify them and the patent owners they represent as if striving to achieve a patent on an innovation of fundamental importance is evil incarnate. What a sad commentary on the cluelessness of the masses.

Any discussion of flaws in the United States patent system inevitably turns to the system’s modern villain: non-practicing entities. They are known more colorfully as patent trolls, although the business model of non-practicing entities has appeared in copyright markets as well as well as in patent markets. In the America Invents Act, Congress directed the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office (GAO) to conduct a study “on the consequences of patent infringement lawsuits brought by non-practicing entities.” At the GAO’s request, we provided data on non-practicing entities for five years (2007-2011).

Contrary to popular belief, things are getting much better in business methods. Applications filed in 1999 had prosecution times of over 10 years (lower green arrow). These and subsequent applications jammed up the system leading to excessive delays to first office actions. Applications filed in 2004, for example, had delays to first office action of 6 years (middle red arrow). Sometime around 2010, however, things started to improve. A lot more patents started issuing and the delays to first office action dropped to around 2 years (upper red arrow). That’s not to say that it’s easy to get a patent in business methods, but at least examiners and applicants are making much better progress in reaching agreement on allowable claims in a reasonable amount of time.