CAPITULO 5: DISTRITO DE PACHACÁMAC
5.8 ANALISIS DEMOGRÁFICO Y POBLACIONAL
examination. The USPTO has a long-standing
commitment to patent quality, and over the past 4 years, its quality measurement has been expanded and made increasingly more transparent. For example, the Patent Quality Composite Score is now part of the U.S.
Department of Commerce’s Priority Goal for the USPTO. In addition, the agency has redoubled its efforts to train its patent examiners, to ensure they stay abreast of the latest developments in the law and technology.
In providing more effective training, the USPTO further enhances patent examination fundamentals,
communication, and cooperation between the examiner and applicant. The USPTO utilizes a highly successful training and refresher training program that encompasses over 20 modules designed to enhance examiners’
knowledge and skills in procedural and legal topics pertaining to patent examination. In addition, as part of Executive Action No. 6, the USPTO expanded its Patent Examiner Technical Training Program (PETTP), which provides patent examiners with direct access to experts who are able to share their technical knowledge on prior art and industry standards in areas of emerging
technologies and established technologies. The PETTP provides an excellent opportunity for communication between patent examiners and the experts who work in the various technologies that are examined throughout the USPTO. This enhanced communication contributes to improving overall patent quality and decreasing patent pendency.
In addition, the Office of Patent Training (OPT) provided a two-phase training program to new supervisory patent examiners, which offers coaching and mentoring, leadership, and software training modules in an effort to help patent examiners reach their full potential. Patent managers and supervisors will continue to participate in
a Leadership Development Program, which focuses on educating and creating leaders.
In response to recent Supreme Court decisions impacting the standards for patent eligibility under 35 U.S.C. § 101, the USPTO issued preliminary guidance documents and provided training to the examining corps on patent subject matter eligibility. In addition, as part of Executive Action No. 2, we have implemented four training modules focused on functional claiming under 35 U.S.C. § 112(f), a type of claiming frequently used in software patents. The training also provides tools for examiners to clarify the examination record to positively affect the clarity of the claims.
As another effort relating to Executive Action No. 2, the USPTO established a glossary pilot, which began on June 2, 2014, and will run through December 31, 2014. The pilot is designed to enhance claim clarity in the specification of software-related patent applications by encouraging and gauging the use of glossaries by patent applicants. To participate in the Glossary Pilot Program, an applicant is required to include a glossary section in the patent application specification to define terms used in the patent application. The pilot is attempting to determine
whether definitions in the glossary section enhance patent quality and improve the clarity of patent claims by enabling the USPTO and the public to more fully understand the meaning of the patent claims. The USPTO continues to leverage a more robust quality measure, the Patent Quality Composite Score. The composite quality metric is composed of seven total factors that take into account stakeholder comments. The following factors measure (a) the quality of the action setting forth the final disposition of the
application; (b) the quality of the actions taken during the course of the examination; (c) the perceived quality of the patent process as measured through external quality surveys of applicants and practitioners; (d) the quality of the examiner’s initial search; (e) the degree to which the first action on the merits follows best examination practices; (f) the degree to which global USPTO data are indicative of compact, robust prosecution; and (g) the degree to which patent prosecution quality is reflected in the perceptions of the examination corps as measured by internal quality surveys. Table 6 exhibits the USPTO’s recent progress on this measure. Note that FY 2011 was the baseline year. Although the quality composite rate increased from 72.7 during the third quarter in FY 2014 to 75.0 during the fourth quarter in FY 2014, the USPTO missed its end-of-year composite target range. Although the USPTO achieved 100 percent of the goal in six of the seven metrics that comprise the Quality Composite Score, there was one metric that underperformed during FY 2014. The underperforming metric is a relatively new metric that was developed concurrent with the implementation of the Quality Composite Score at the start of FY 2011. As part of its new Quality Initiative, the USPTO believes that further refinements are needed in this metric and intends to work with the PPAC and USPTO stakeholders to reassess the target originally established for this metric.
Although in the early planning stages, the USPTO is developing a quality initiative that will focus on providing
USPTO Patent Reform Coordinator Janet Gongola (center) speaks with John Vandenberg, partner with Klarquist Sparkman LLP, and David Jones, Microsoft’s Assistant General Counsel for intellectual property policy, at the USPTO’s Software Partnership Meeting in Alexandria, VA, on July 22, 2014. The meetings provide an informal forum for software industry stakeholders to discuss key patent and intellectual property topics.
the best work products and services possible. This will be done by expanding and refining examiner training and guidance, improving the customer experience, and engaging the public by creating partnerships that educate and seek input. The sustainable funding model, with enhanced financial tools provided by the AIA, allows the USPTO to adjust fees to recover the costs of planning for, implementing, and maintaining such long-term initiatives. See Table 6 for the USPTO's FY 2014 Patent Quality Composite Score results.
TABLE 6
Measure: Patent Quality Composite Score
Fiscal Year Target Actual
2011 N/A 30.7 2012 48–56 72.4 2013 65–73 71.9 2014 83–91 75.0 2015 83–91 2016 100
Target Not Met.
Table 7 provides the relative cost effectiveness of the entire patent examination process over time, or the efficiency with which the organization applies its resources to production.
TABLE 7
Total Cost Per Patent Production Unit
Fiscal Year Target Actual
2011 $4,041 $3,594 2012 $3,970 $3,617 2013 $4,041 $3,686 2014 $4,633 $3,940 2015 $4,680 2016 $4,699 Target Met.
(Executive Action No. 6)—In providing more effective training, the USPTO further enhances patent examination fundamentals, communication, and cooperation between the examiner and applicant. The USPTO utilizes a highly successful training and refresher training program that encompasses over 20 modules designed to enhance examiners’ knowledge and skills in procedural and legal topics pertaining to patent examination. The USPTO also implemented the PETTP, which provides patent
examiners with direct access to experts who are able to share their technical knowledge on prior art and industry standards in areas of emerging technologies and
established technologies. The PETTP provides an
excellent opportunity for communication between patent examiners and the experts who work in the various technologies that are examined throughout the USPTO. This enhanced communication contributes to improving overall patent quality and decreasing patent pendency. In addition, the OPT provided a two-phase training program to new supervisory patent examiners, which offers coaching and mentoring, leadership, and software training modules to help patent examiners reach their full potential. Patent managers and supervisors will continue to participate in a leadership development program that focuses on educating and creating leaders.