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GERMANU.S. Patent, Trademark Office after Budget Cuts
Individual inventors and businesses around the world invest significant resources in research and development. Protecting the fruits of expensive and time-consuming innovation is among the first step to long-term business success. Every year, thousands of U.S. inventors and applicants seek protection of their innovations in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
On April 2011, the U.S. federal budget for the remaining fiscal year (through September 30, 2011) was significantly cut. The Full-Year Continuing Appropriations Act, 2011 implements the largest non-defense spending cut in the history of the United States. The Act cuts an unprecedented nearly $40 billion in federal spending. This includes $12 billion in reductions signed into law under previous continuing resolutions, as well as nearly $28 billion in additional new spending cuts.
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office is directly affected by these spending cuts. The total spending authority through September 30, 2011 has been limited to $90 million. As a result, the Office has taken immediate steps to meet its new budget: hiring for both new positions and backfills is frozen, employee training has been reduced, funding for Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) outsourcing is substantially reduced, and all overtime is suspended.
For inventors and applicants with patent applications pending at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, this could mean additional delays before examination and patent issuance. However, many Office programs designed to expedite examination of patent applications are unaffected by the budget cuts. Using these various programs, the attorneys of Urban Thier Federer & Chinnery can navigate around the monetary shortfalls of the Office and facilitate the examination of your patent application.
In the future, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office may get some long-term fiscal relief. The Patent Reform Act of 2011 modifies the way the Office is funded by allowing the Office to retain fees collected from applicants. This Act is still pending in Congress as of May 2011 but is closer to enactment than in the past. Also, the federal budget for fiscal year 2012 proposes to give the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office full access to its fee collections and strengthens the Office’s efforts to improve the speed and quality of patent examinations through a temporary fee surcharge that better aligns application fees with processing costs.
For more information on patent protection in the United States, Email Christopher J. Menke .
Filed under the Intellectual Property Law category.
