It’s official – President Obama has lost another nominee for Secretary of Commerce. Republican Senator Judd Gregg officially withdrew from consideration for the post, citing political differences with the administration.
As this story was developing, the Patent and Trademark Office held its public roundtable discussion on the possibility of implementing a deferred examination procedure (the request for examination sort, not the de facto deferred sort). The discussion was mostly mundane, but did have a few high points.
One exchange in particular caught my ear - John Doll and Professor Arti Rai hinted at a planned increase in the fee for filing a Request for Continued Examination. Some feel Professor Rai’s comments carried an implication that the fee should be set high enough to actually discourage the filing of RCE’s (see the comments on this PatentlyO post). Indeed, late yesterday, a trusted source from the Office, who wishes to remain anonymous, confirmed that “a rumor that has been circulating is that a proposed significant fee increase is forthcoming.” If true, look for statistics regarding increases in various after final procedures first….to justify any later proposed increases as reasonably related to covering the cost of examination.
The roundtable comments by Doll and Rai should serve to put the patent bar on notice: the Office continues to seek radical administrative reform, all while President Obama continues the troubled search for a policy leader in the Department of Commerce. In the absence of policy directives from above, the pursuit for administrative efficiency appears to be guiding the ship.
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# posted on 02.16.09 at 10:11 am
I am thrilled that they are looking to make significant changes, but an increase in fees and deferred examination does not seem to be “radical administrative reform.” Rather these are just fixes directed to making the broken system work better. Real reform (which shouldn’t even be considered “radical” in these extraordinary times) would comprise total reformulation of the PTO administrative system, revamping of the way in which we patent types interact with the Office and modification to the expectations of both large and small patentees. Unfortunately, there are likely too many interests to be assuaged for this to happen with the US patent system, and we will no doubt continue to be stuck with “radical” solutions to fix the broken system like the currently proposed fee increases and deferred examination.
We can always hold out hope that the new administration will be able to acquire leadership for the Commerce Department and the PTO who can really effect change.
My prediction: like Welfare reform didn’t happen until the 2d part of the Clinton era, true reform will not come to the patent system until later in the Obama era. (You may recall that Welfare was thought to be an intractable problem wholly impossible to change. It changed, but it took several years of legislative effort in order to make it happen.)
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# posted on 02.13.09 at 3:41 pm
[...] see that Matt Buchanan has a post mentioning rumors too: Promote the Progress on Obama continues search for Commerce Secretary, while PTO continues search for radical administrative… No TweetBacks yet. (Be the first to Tweet this [...]
# posted on 02.17.09 at 12:03 pm
[...] Significant Increase in RCE Fee Stephen Nipper of The Invent Blog® and Matt Buchanan of Promote the Progress® are reporting that the PTO is considering another administrative rule change that should be highly [...]
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