As of Wednesday, January 20, we have a new president, one who has never been known as a primary voice in IP policy. We gathered up a few assessments of Joe Biden and his approach to intellectual property to see where he stands on the issues.

With 2020, seemingly the longest of years, finally behind us, let’s look back at a few of the most important patent-related developments of last year to best prepare for 2021.

2020 is not exactly what we expected, was it? Business has felt anything but usual. Now, at the end of the year, we have time to reflect, consider new best practices and areas of improvement, and keep our fingers crossed that 2021 will be at least a tiny bit less surprising.

In 2019, the USPTO released a report surveying the participation of female inventor-patentees in the U.S. patent system. The main discovery: women are still underrepresented in the patent system, but their participation rate is slowly improving.

Due to the success of Track One, the USPTO has created the Fast-Track Appeals Pilot Program to carry the benefits of prioritized examination through to appeals.

The new program aims to review eligible appeals and issue a decision within six months from the date a petition is granted. The average pendency for a standard appeal is currently about 14 months — down from a high of 30 months in 2015. Given its low petition fee and promise to cut disposition time by more than half, the Program is likely to be popular among patent applicants — despite one key limitation.

What is the Fast-Track Appeals Pilot Program?
The Program is essentially an extension of the Track One prioritized examination program, which allows applicants to obtain a final disposition on a patent application within 12 months of the application’s filing date. The Track One program is both popular and successful, but prioritized examination under that program does not carry through to appeals from a final rejection — meaning that applicants could lose the benefit of prioritized examination should they decide to appeal. Due to the success of Track One, the USPTO created the new program to carry the benefits of prioritized examination through to appeals. 

The eligibility requirements for the Program are fairly straightforward. To qualify for fast-track status, the following four conditions must be met: 

Much has been made about the economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. While it is clear that the pandemic and its associated lockdowns have resulted in a sharp economic contraction, it is unclear what effect—if any—it will have on the USPTO in terms of patent filing and other patent prosecution-related activity.

With so much going on in the world during the first half of 2020 — a global pandemic, an economic recession, and widespread protest movements — developments in the intellectual property sphere have largely flown under the radar. But that does not mean 2020 has been bereft of patent news.

Prompted by the CARES Act, the USPTO announced extensions to the time allowed to file certain patent-related documents and to pay certain required fees. Legal teams can use patent analytics tools like Juristat to quickly identify which applications qualify.

In 2019, the USPTO issued revised § 101 guidance, while the Senate Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on Intellectual Property held a series of high-profile hearings on a legislative proposal to abrogate Alice. Several patent-related bills were also introduced in Congress, including the STRONGER Patents Act and the Inventor Rights Act.

As we continue to monitor those developments, we now turn our attention to the future to speculate as to what the new year might hold for the patent world. 

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