Abstract
This Article reports data and analyses to facilitate answering these questions. The reported data was obtained from two sources. The first is the Workload Tables from the USPTO annual reports, called the "USPTO Performance and Accountability Reports," provided to the President, Congress, and public.' The second is data received from the USPTO in response to Freedom of Information Act ("FOIA") requests.3 From these two data sources, information such as the number of applications filed per year, the type of applications being filed and prosecuted, the pendency of these applications, and their disposition, including the number of them issued as patents, was obtained or determined. This Article is a continuation of the work of two of the authors (Cecil Quillen and Ogden Webster) reporting on earlier versions of this dat set and published in four previous articles in The Federal Circuit Bar journa in 2001, 2002, 2006, and 2009.4 This Article presents data and analyses for the period from 1996 to 2012 i three parts-the number, types and disposition of patent applications bein examined by the USPTO (the USPTO's "input"); the number of application allowed and patents issued by the USPTO (the USPTO's "output"); and th number of pending applications and the average pendency for an applicatio (the "difference" or commonly referred to as the USPTO's "backlog") Corresponding data and analyses for earlier periods can be found in th previously mentioned Federal Circuit Bar journal articles.
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2013
Recommended Citation
Christoper A. Cotropia, Cecil D. Quillen, Jr. & Ogden H. Webster, Patent Applications and the Performance of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, 23 Fed. Cir. B.J. 179 (2013).
Comments
Co-authored with Cecil D. Quillen, Jr. and Ogden H. Webster