Patent office to battle backlog

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has begun a hiring spree to reduce an expected backlog of 580,000 applications by the end of the year.

The federal agency, which issues patents for new technology and inventions, will hire close to 1,800 patent examiners over the next two years, increasing its current staff of 3,800 examiners by 47 percent, saidspokeswoman Brigid Quinn.

“We have to hire more people to keep up with the amount of applications that just grows and grows,” Ms. Quinn said.

Ms. Quinn blamed the backlog, which has grown considerably in the past few years, on an increased number of applications filed and on more of them being larger and more complex. The number of applications filed each year has nearly doubled in the past decade.

Last year, the patent office received 376,810 applications, up 6 percent from the 355,418 applications in 2003. About 50 percent of the requests are for technology such as semiconductors, computer hardware and software, and telecommunications, Ms. Quinn said.

The patent office processed 304,921 applications last year, 187,170 of which received approval for patent protection.

The agency has not had the resources in the past decade to hire enough patent examiners to lower the application ratio, Ms. Quinn said.

The hiring project is part of a five-year plan the patent office has implemented to cut down on the time businesses and inventors must wait for a patent. The average wait is about 2 years from the time a request is filed.

But patents for computer technology and biotechnology products are often more complicated and can take up to five years.

Businesses have to defend their products and ideas from being stolen during this time, and they lose several years from the patent’s 20-year life span.

The duration of a patent, which gives individuals or companies the exclusive right to sell, use, make or import their product, starts when the initial application is filed.

“Holding up patents by several years restrains development in the marketplace and is bad for the economy,” said Gregory J. Maier, a senior partner with Alexandria intellectual property law firm Oblon, Spivak, McClelland, Maier & Neustadt PC.

Mr. Maier, who represents clients such as Toshiba, Sony and L’Oreal, said the patent office’s efforts are a good first step but do not promise any quick improvement.

The situation probably will get worse before it gets better.

“It takes four to five years for new examiners to reach their peak productivity because their job is to delve through law and science and make complex decisions,” Ms. Quinn said.

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