Intellectual Property

Enhancements Needed in Computing and Reporting Patent Examination Statistics Gao ID: RCED-96-190 July 15, 1996

This report provides information on the operations of the Commerce Department's Patent and Trademark Office. GAO (1) analyzes patent dependency--the amount of time that the Patent and Trademark Office spends in examining an application to determine whether an invention should receive a patent; (2) compares the Patent and Trademark Office's resources committed to the patent process, the trademark process, the dissemination of information, and executive direction and administration; and (3) compares the Patent and Trademark Office's examination processes with those of other industrialized countries.

GAO found that: (1) PTO computation and reporting of patent pendency is inadequate; (2) PTO does not provide separate statistics on patents issued, abandoned applications, or applications still in process in its pendency calculations; (3) PTO does not report variations in pendency among individual applications or measure pendency from the original filing date in accordance with patent law; (4) PTO does not determine how much of pendency is due to the patent examination process or applicant delays; (5) applicant delays may constitute as much as 36 percent of the average pendency period; (6) PTO has consistently committed most of its resources to its patent process, which in fiscal year (FY) 1995 constituted three-quarters of its funds and staff; (7) funding and staffing for the trademark process, executive direction and administration, and information dissemination also increased from FY 1986 through FY 1995; (8) during the same period, the PTO patent workload increased significantly while average pendency decreased by about 2.9 months; (9) it is difficult to compare the PTO patent examination process and pendency with those of Japan and Europe, which are the other two primary patent-granting entities; (10) Japan and Europe require an additional request for examination before starting the examination process, which may delay examination for months or years after an applicant's initial filing; and (11) Japan and Europe include applications in-process in their pendency computations.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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