Yesterday CBS News published a story about the patent backlog at the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and the impact on businesses and independent inventors.
According to the article, USPTO Director David Kappos is aiming to cut the average wait time from thirty-six to twenty months in the next five years. To this end, Kappos intends to hire an additional 1,200 patent examiners and upgrade the USPTO computer systems.
In addition to discussing the average three year time frame for examination, several interesting points were addressed in the article. One of the issues raised related to funding of the patent office. At present, the USPTO is entirely self-financed. In fact, funds collected by the USPTO are diverted to fund other federal budget items. However, because the USPTO is not empowered to set (and raise) its fees, there are concerns the USPTO is not able to appropriately address the backlog concerns.
On a related note, the article included quotes from an interview with Hank Nothhaft, CEO of Tessera Technologies. Mr. Nothfatt echos statements I have heard from other business owners and patent owners, “medium-sized and profitable companies like ourselves — we’d be willing to pay a significantly higher fee in order to fund the patent office correctly.” According to the article, Tesserra has 850 issued U.S. patents and another 350 pending U.S. patent applications. As further provided in the article, Tesserra derives $220 million in annual revenue from licensing about 150 patents to semiconductor industry and Nothfatt estimates the value of each patent to his firm more than $1 million a year. Accordingly, Nothhaft says, “several thousand dollars actually, as far as patent cost to us, is relatively immaterial.”
In my experience this is not uncommon sentiment from businesses with valuable patent portfolios. However, for smaller business and independent inventors, the cost of patents are not insignificant. While I agree that when successfully accomplished, a patent portfolio can be vastly more valuable than the investment in patent fees and attorney costs, it is important to be confident in your patent strategy and appropriately balance the costs and benefits in building your patent portfolio.
If you would like to speak with a Chicago patent attorney about your patent matters, please contact me for a free initial consultation.
Tags: patent examination, patent law, uspto
