Patent Office Lowers First Action, Total Pendency
Written October 11, 2019
The US Patent and Trademark Office on October 9, 2019, announced that it achieved its patent examination pendency goals of reducing first office action times to under 15 months, and reducing total pendency times to under 24 months.
According to a blog post authored by PTO Director Andrei Iancu and Commissioner for Patents Drew Hirshfeld, as of September 30, 2019, which is the end of the USPTO 2019 fiscal year (FY), the averages are 14.7 months for first action pendency and 23.8 months for total pendency.
“All along, we have maintained and indeed improved the quality of our examination,” Iancu and Hirshfeld said in the blog post. “This achievement marks the USPTO’s lowest first action pendency since January 2002.”