The close of another fiscal year at the USPTO brings forth some interesting statistics. For instance, the number of new patent applications filed in FY 2007 rose to 467,243; up over 4.8% from the 445,613 applications filed in FY 2006.  (and those numbers don’t even include the 132,352 provisional applications filed in 2007!)

Additionally, despite the USPTO again hiring over 1200 new patent examiners in the past year, the number of pending patent applications increased over 10% in the past year to 1,112,517. According to the statistics, an applicant, on average, will not receive a first office action until 25.3 months after their application is filed (up from 22.6 months in 2006). Furthermore, the average total pendency of an application in the USPTO has risen to over two and a half years!

Did you know...

a) The USPTO employs almost 9000 people, including almost 5500 patent examiners and over 400 trademark examining attorneys!

b) The number of patent applications filed electronically more than tripled in 2007, jumping from 14.2 percent in 2006 to 49.3 percent in 2007.

c) Over 184,000 patents issued in 2007.

d) In 2007 over 22,000 patents issued to residents of California... followed by Texas at 6,316 and New York at 6,007.

e) The postal service was granted 15 patents in 2007!

A future post will examine these statistics with respect to golf club and ball technology patent applications.

David Dawsey  - The Golfing Lawyer

PS – click here to review the full annual report

PPS – click here to check out the same post, but for 2006