Last week, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office said that it was adopting new procedures for measuring the quality of patent examination. The new procedures were developed by a joint USPTO-Patent Public Advisory Committee (PPAC) Task Force following consultation with the patent community and public. See Patent Doc blog.
Under the new procedures, seven elements of the examination process will be assessed:
-
The final rejection and allowance compliance rate (the correctness of the examiners' overall determination of the patentability of the claims)
-
The in-process compliance rate (the quality of the actions taken during the course of examination)
-
The use of best search practices in the examiner's initial search for prior art
-
The use of best examination practices in the first action on the merits
-
Trends in compact and efficient examination as reflected in aggregate USPTO data
-
The perceptions of applicants and practitioners as measured by surveys
-
The perceptions of examiners as measured by surveys
The USPTO will publish the results of each measure approximately twice per year.
The quality of some patents making it through the system has been criticized in the past few years. Experts would agree that low quality patents exact an economic penalty on the system.
Low patent quality can lead to prohibitively expensive litigation that can have a devastating impact on business models, especially of small and medium-sized companies. As valuations of companies are increasingly based on intangible assets, poor-quality intellectual property rights have negative impacts on free market economies rather than providing incentives to innovation, which is ultimately their purpose. (See Iam Magazine).
There is not really a concensus that patent quality has actually slipped despite complaints to the contrary. Most of the evidence to support this notion is anecdotal. However, it still may be a good idea to try some new measures to assess the quality of examinatons and prove the point one way or the other.
Published by Bruce Lehr October 14th 2010.
Comments