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11.18.2004
Patent Backlog
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It takes an average of 27 months for the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to approve a new patent, and a large coalition of intellectual property groups believes the House has a way to reduce that wait. Sarah Lai Stirland reports in the latest Technology Daily (subscription required) that a number of groups -- including the American Intellectual Property Law Association, Biotechnology Industry Organization, Computing Technology Industry Association, Intellectual Property Owners Association (IPO), International Trademark Association, Medical Device Manufacturers Association, National Association of Manufacturers and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce -- are urging lawmakers to ensure that patent fees aren't diverted from the PTO into the general treasury. Instead, the thinking goes, PTO can use those funds to hire more examiners and further train existing ones in new technologies.
President Bush's FY 2005 budget was predicated on passage of legislation ending the PTO fee diversion, and the House passed a bill by Lamar Smith that the Texas Republican painstakingly negotiated with House appropriators. But in the final days of the 108th Congress, House-Senate negotiators are using the Senate version of the Commerce-State-Justice bill, which doesn't include PTO diversion language. The Senate bill would increase PTO's budget by more than $320 million to $1.5 million, but the intellectual property groups argue that for PTO to hire new examiners, they need a more stable funding stream.
It is obvious on its face that money collected from patent applicants should be used to process those patents. It's also obvious that we should leap at an opportunity to ensure that a federal agency is able to fund itself. Patent filers have supported the House legislation, even though it would raise their patent fees, because they believe -- rightly -- it's more important to our economy to have fast turnaround on patents. In the 27 months it takes the PTO to approve a patent, a software maker might release three new versions of its software.
All of this is eminently logical, but logic has no bearing on a congressional appropriator fearful of losing control over the flow of tax dollars.
posted by Patrick Ross : 11/18/2004 10:13:45 AM
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