by Dennis Crouch
This updated chart groups patent applications by filing date and then divides each group into three categories: Patented, Abandoned, and Pending. Some insights from the data:
- The grant rate rose substantially from 2011 to 2018. This may be due to the movement among patent attorneys to draft more technical and detailed patent applications. I have not yet attempted to measure whether the increase marks a new level of patent application complexity. (Remember, I’m comparing applications filed in 2011 to those filed in 2018).
- Abandonments typically occur after multiple rounds of prosecution. Thus, there are only a few abandonments in applications pending less than three years. (Look at the applications filed in early 2021).
- Less than 10% of cases are still pending after 4-years of prosecution, with most issuances happening within 30-months of filing.
For data consistency, I used only published applications as I generally cannot see abandoned/pending data for unpublished applications. In addition, some of the issued patents have already expired after failing to pay the maintenance fees. Those expired patents were categorized in this chart as patented.
The grant rate rose after hacks like Dudas and Rogan were tossed in favor of people like Kappos, Lee, etc. who have actual knowledge and experience with patents.
Lee was a st00ge (even worse than Dudas, as Dudas was an unknowing pawn and Lee was very much aware of the Efficient Infringer efforts).
Pretty sure Lee is now employed by none other than Google.
This is the sort of thing that is easy to check. As it happens, she is not presently at Google, although obviously she used to be.
Still and all, I was surprised by PPO’s implication that Lee was part of an effort to turn around the PTO’s falling grant rates. That is certainly not how I remember the Lee tenure. As I have already noted elsewhere on this thread, I remain surprised that nothing about Lee’s tenure is discernible in the data that Prof. C presents here. That is to say, there is no evident discontinuity between Kappos’ tenure and Iancu’s tenure that sticks out in the above chart.
Ignition achieved in our lifetimes bros. US did it.
link to youtube.com
Be there (possibly) patentable (and, naturally, patent eligible) matter pertaining to this success?
I’m sure they’ll patent their process, but probably not going to be worth much anytime soon. Maybe tho.
Indeed. The USA. All of it.
I am assuming that Lawrence Livermore’s success was funded by the American taxpayer, the “State”, that thing so derided by so many of today’s most successful entrepreneurs.
Is it not so, that the greatest power within the concept of “ignition” is the power to attract investment money, to carry the concept forward to commercialisation? I attended an Oxford University talk some months ago, in which the speaker declared that “ignition” was imminent and that the pace of progress after that would depend primarily on how much money became then available for further R&D. It’sgoing to speed up dramatically now, isn’t it?
I’ve observed breakthroughs in fusion have been regularly announced, about every 3 years, for the past 3 decades, yet it goes nowhere. It is same in other fields where “the answer is just around the corner”, pink ribbons, etc. and the problem is … they always need only, more funding. Rest assured the public will be the last to know, heck, even Stalin knew about the Manhattan Project before Truman! Magnetically-contained fusion, goes nowhere, ever.
Lots of things fall into that “just around the corner” bucket, eh my friend?
haha, yeah. I always appreciated the Farnsworth fusor patents, and the politics b/h why it was buried, petrodollar emergence, control systems. I bet L/L labs has nothing novel or unobvious in view of those patents from that Utahn farmboy Philo who invented television too ! American.
Yer a badddA in legal, obviously a gifted mind. Did you grow up on a farm ? i.e., what was your dietary nutrition like in the fomentive years ? Never said it cuz it didn’t need sayin, everybody knows… !! Excellent stances you take, someday I’ll challenge ya better, maybe…. meantime… its all about the “res”, cuz invalid patents don’t have any res. Take a few chomps on that maybe, there might be some fruit there. That should be the test, sometimes. Where’s the res in that issued patent ?? Invalid patents don’t have a res. Easy.
“Is it not so, that the greatest power within the concept of “ignition” is the power to attract investment money, to carry the concept forward to commercialisation? I attended an Oxford University talk some months ago, in which the speaker declared that “ignition” was imminent and that the pace of progress after that would depend primarily on how much money became then available for further R&D. It’s going to speed up dramatically now, isn’t it?”
I hope so, but I doubt it. Imo you’re looking at conservatively speaking 40-60 more years before an actual reactor making appreciable energy comes out, and even then it won’t be economically viable.
“The grant rate rose substantially from 2011 to 2018”
100% competely, totally from PTO admin, no way spec quality as-filed changed much during that period. Implies a change of standards, the Q includes , under what authority and by whom, to cause change in grant rate ? ooo, call it “delta GR”
I thought Alice was supposed to have hurt patent application chances at the PTO?
I thought Alice was supposed to have hurt patent application chances at the PTO?
It does. Have you been asleep the last 8 years?
I recently received an office action for technology that involves communications between two computer components (having no human interface whatsoever and performing actions that have no direct impact on a human) that has nothing to do with mental processes yet I still get a 101 rejection. Now I have to waste my time addressing a rejection that should have never been made. It has been nearly 4 years since the 2019 Patent Eligibility Guidelines and I’m still getting this cr ap.
I thought Alice was supposed to have hurt patent application chances at the PTO?
It does.
This is my impression as well. I am surprised and puzzled to see no evident effect from Mayo/Alice in the data. I would have thought that the share of abandonments would have bulged at least temporarily following those cases, but I do not see such a bulge.
I would have thought that the share of abandonments would have bulged at least temporarily following those cases, but I do not see such a bulge.
Attorneys/inventors adapt. The fact that patents issued subsequent to Alice doesn’t mean that they are good patents.
Also, applicants filed after Alice were filed with Alice in mind. This chart doesn’t count the number of applications that would have been filed but weren’t because of Alice.
All fair points.
“Attorneys/inventors adapt.”
I don’t recall the tone of the discussion reflecting that it was a matter of mere adaptation to overcome Alice for pre-Alice applications.
Your point regarding post-Alice applications is well taken, but unlike Greg, I was expecting to see the perturbation most recognizable in the cases filed prior to the date of the Alice decision.
The chart does not address claim scope.
Indeed it does not, as you say. Is it really plausible, however, that every application that was filed pre-Alice with an Alice defect is rescuable with narrowing amendments?
It seems to me that we might have expected some growth in abandonments in the 2011 to 2014 cohort (i.e., the cohort that was filed before Alice, but examined under Alice). If you did not know that Alice had happened, there is nothing in these data that would clue you into Alice’s existence. That still surprises me.
Plausible?
Are you asserting otherwise? Where is the evidence that you so often demand of others for such an assertion?
(One need not have ‘every,’ as one may be satisfied with a level to fall within the error variance of the data gathering for this graph)
I’m missing the confusion. Isn’t it obvious by now, that no patents will be permitted to interfere with the evolution of geopolitical computerism and the notion of the “Company Store” ? What am I missing ?
“ I recently received an office action for technology that involves communications between two computer components (having no human interface whatsoever and performing actions that have no direct impact on a human) that has nothing to do with mental processes yet I still get a 101 rejection.”
1. Two computers, wherein the computers are in communication with each other, wherein said communication is a non-obvious communication relating to computing and has no human impact.
This is an eligible claim in your fantasy world?
Let’s see a patentable claim — to you — in the computational arts.
(repeat request).
I love that your example is basically O’Reilly v. Morse, the OG patent-eligibility case from before the civil war. Like “communications” related patents have raised red flags for 150+ years now (which isnt to say they are all unpatentable, but that you think its because of Alice or is some new off the rails thing is hilarious, as is “but my communications is on a computer!!!”)
“ The grant rate rose substantially from 2011 to 2018. This may be due to the movement among patent attorneys to draft more technical and detailed patent applications. ”
That is hilarious. Not a joke?
“ The grant rate rose substantially from 2011 to 2018. This may be due to the movement among patent attorneys to draft more technical and detailed patent applications. ”
Late to the party on this post. I have to think the comment is clearly tongue in cheek.
Its so hard to put a finger on, we like to look for correlations as in “A causes B” but there are many factors which go into a mere grant rate. Perhaps it is akin to the efficiency of an Ottomotor, having a plurality of contributions. I’d reckon the new concepts introduced by the case law which came about during the 2010’s had a heavy impact. Suspicious, I’d be curious to see how it broke down in terms of individual GAU’s, as in, its prob. reasonable to believe that TC 1600’s grant rate changed more than did the art unit from which chemical patents are emitted, etc. A gut feel suggests maybe that only 3 or 4 art units contributed unevenhandedly to the change in grant rate, but I reserve the right to be wrong !
Two quick thoughts:
(1) Does this mean that the grant rate rose during Lee‘s tenure relative to Kappos’ tenure? I confess that I find that intuitively implausible.
(2) “Less than 10% of cases are still pending…” Should this be “fewer than 10% of cases…”? If the adjective is modifying “cases” (which would be how I would parse it), then these are individual items rather than the collective whole, and should be “fewer” rather than “less.” On the other hand, I suppose that you could parse the adjective as modifying “10%,” which is arguably a collective whole rather than a set of individual items.
You have to remember that the 2011 and 2018 dates are the application filing dates. For the most part, those cases didn’t start being examined until 14-months later.
Grammar? What is that?
Michelle Lee served from 2015 to 2017. That means that she oversaw the USPTO during a time that they were (mostly) examining applications filed between 2012 and 2015. David Kappos served from 2009 to 2013, and was therefore mostly supervising the examination of applications filed between 2006 and 2011.
Your chart begins at 2010, so we cannot see all of Kappos’ tenure here, but abandonments make up a larger share and grants a smaller share of the totals in the 2010 to 2011 interval than in the 2012 to 2015 interval. I would not have been surprised if the grant share were smaller under Lee’s tenure. I find that surprising, however, that the grant share is actually larger for the cohort of apps that were examined under Lee’s tenure.
You have to remember that the 2011 and 2018 dates are the application filing dates. For the most part, those cases didn’t start being examined until 14-months later.
It also doesn’t reflect WHEN those applications were actually allowed.
That’s right. The chart gets too complicated.
Absolutely Wt — and genuinely suprised that Greg does not understand this (not-so) subtle point.
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