Hey, I've got something for you Stat Junkies who like to review performance stats from various goverment agenices -- a new report from the Patents Doc Blog -- that outlines the 2012 US PTO performance in processing patent applications. Wow! Are you excited or what?
In a nutshell, the US PTO processed more patent applications in shorter times than their goals for 2012 called for and they improved across the board in all categories (see link above). Some highlights include:
- Average first action pendency (21.9 months versus target of 22.6 months)
- Average total pendency (32.4 months versus target of 34.7 months)
- Patent applications filed electronically (97.1% versus target of 96.0%)
- Number of applications filed increased from 537,171 in FY 2011 to 565,566 in FY 2012 (5.3% increase in both years)
- Number of applications awaiting action dropped from 690,967 in FY 2011 to 633,812 in FY 2012 (4th consecutive year drop)
- Total number of pending applications also decreased, dropping from 1,168,928 in FY 2011 to 1,157,147 in FY 2012.
For the next few years though, the sledding gets much tougher with respect to first action and total pendency. For first action pendency, the annual performance target drops from 22.6 months for FY 2012 to 18.0 months for FY 2013 and 15.8 months for FY 2014, and for total pendency, the annual performance target drops from 34.7 months in FY 2012 to 30.1 months in FY 2013 and 26.1 months in FY 2014.
Mush PTO. Mush.
Posted by Bruce Lehr Nov 29th 2012.
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