Techpreneurship: Patent Office to Expedite ‘Green’ Patents

Jeff Amerine

Techpreneurship, with Jeff Amerine

(Jeff Amerine is an IA advisor and officer with the University of Arkansas Technology Licensing Office. Each Thursday, his Techpreneurship blog will appear in INOV8. Drop him a line in comments.)

Protection and commercialization of intellectual property (patents, copyrights, trademarks and trade secrets) can equal serious competitive advantage to any technology-driven business.

In the U.S., all roads lead to the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).  For nearly the past decade, the USPTO has rewarded patent examiners for rejecting patent applications on the first review or first several reviews, called “office actions.”

It would be fair to say many of these rejections were/are not based on the merits of the invention.  The theory behind this “genius” idea was to improve the quality of the patents that finally issued.

Instead, what happened was a huge backlog in patent applications in process (pending), a significant reduction in patents granted, and an average total cycle time from application to award of 40 months!  Oh, and I almost forgot to mention — this process drove an unbelievable increase in the required examiner staffing at the USPTO.

So you’re asking yourself at this point, what’s up with this story line?  Well, here’s the deal.  Stan Baker, a Fayetteville-based intellectual property attorney, chemical engineer, and veterinarian, brought to my attention a pilot program the USPTO has planned to expedite “Green” inventions through the process.

Here are some of the key points excerpted from the recent USPTO news release:

American competitiveness depends on innovation and innovation depends on creative Americans developing new technology,” U.S. Commerce Secretary Gary Locke said. “By ensuring that many new products will receive patent protection more quickly, we can encourage our brightest innovators to invest needed resources in developing new technologies and help bring those technologies to market more quickly.”

Locke announced the USPTO pilot program at a press conference with U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu today at the Commerce Department’s headquarters.

“Every day an important green tech innovation is hindered from coming to market is another day we harm our planet and another day lost in creating green businesses and green jobs,” Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the USPTO David Kappos said. “Applications in this pilot program will see a significant savings in pendency, which will help bring green innovations to market more quickly.”

Pending patent applications in green technologies will be eligible to be accorded special status and given expedited examination, which will have the effect of reducing the time it takes to patent these technologies by an average of one year. Earlier patenting of these technologies enables inventors to secure funding, create businesses, and bring vital green technologies into use much sooner.

You can read more about the planned pilot program in a USPTO news release,  at http://www.uspto.gov/news/pr/2009/09_33.jsp

We should definitely keep an open mind regarding this initiative.  Any improvement in patent processing time will be welcome.

Even so, I can’t help but wonder what impact this will have on other critical patent applications like those in the biotech or electronics space…..Do these get pushed to the bottom of the pile?  And who gets to decide what “Green” is anyway?  Nearly any invention that saves time, effort, waste, and cost could be viewed as “Green.”

Is the USPTO going to perform a Life Cycle Assessment on each invention to rate its “Greeness”?

Wouldn’t it just be better to apply a LEAN, streamlined review methodology to all patent processing??  Is that too much to ask?

I hope the creators of this USPTO pilot program have considered the unintended consequences that usually occur when the government begins to pick winners and losers….

Let me know your thoughts, and definitely share your experiences in the long and winding patent prosecution path.

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