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Funding and performance at the US Patent and Trademark Office

Abstract

Despite recent patent law reforms, the US Patent and Trademark Office's ability to deal with inefficiencies in patent examination will continue to rely on the annual Congressional appropriations process.

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Figure 1: Appropriations, revenues (from user fees) and budget requests at the USPTO during FY1991–2010 (in 2010 billion $).
Figure 2: Patents awaiting examiner action, pending, filed and issued at the USPTO during 1991–2010 (in thousands).

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Acknowledgements

D.H. is grateful to Stuart Graham for facilitating this study. The author also thanks Dianne Buie, Dana Colarulli, Todd Dickinson, Talis Dzenitis, David Fitzpatrick, Bronwyn Hall, Bruce Lehman, Alan Marco, Gerald Mossinghoff, Christopher Pearson, Michelle Picard, Tom Stoll and Gerard Torres for helpful discussions and suggestions. Part of this research was conducted when D.H. was a visiting scholar at the Chief Economist's Office in the USPTO. The analysis and recommendations in this manuscript, however, are solely D.H.'s and do not necessarily reflect the views of the USPTO. All data reported in this paper are archived in the annual USPTO Performance and Accountability Reports (http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/ac/ido/oeip/taf/ann_rpt_intermed.htm).

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Correspondence to Deepak Hegde.

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Hegde, D. Funding and performance at the US Patent and Trademark Office. Nat Biotechnol 30, 148–150 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1038/nbt.2110

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