Iria

ALEXANDRIA, Va.--The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office plans to overhaul its oft-maligned electronic patent filing process, starting with beta testing of a new, Web-based system in December and going live in March, an agency official said Friday.

The office is looking to boost the less than 2 percent of patent filings--or slightly more than 7,000 this year--that currently arrive electronically, Acting Commissioner for Patents John Doll told attendees at the Independent Inventor Conference on the USPTO's new campus.

The push to go increasingly digital reflects the office's drive to get through a backlog of about 850,000 pending applications as the number continues to rise. The office recently spent 18 months digitizing 250 million pages of paper records. (Now paper applications are scanned within days of when they arrive). It also plans to hire 950 new examiners this year and more than 1,000 each year for the next several years "until we catch up," Doll said.

Most applicants currently send their forms the old-fashioned way. In fact, the Patent Office is the "largest recipient of overnight mail in the world," said Margaret Focarino, deputy commissioner for patent operations
__________
Read More / Source: ZDNet