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>[10.Mar.10] Patents – USPTO and UKIPO tackle patent backlogs
Source: USPTO [Adapted]

The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and the United Kingdom Intellectual Property Office (UKIPO) agreed to develop an action plan for reducing patent processing backlogs in both offices.

On 10.Mar.2010, the United Kingdom Minister of State for Higher Education and Intellectual Property and the Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the USPTO committed both the UKIPO and the USPTO to develop a plan to optimize reuse of work on patent applications that are filed jointly at both offices. To this end, the offices will identify all areas of reutilization potential by the end of this calendar year, and shall pursue measures designed to facilitate maximum reuse by building confidence in the work done by each office.

The agreement commits the two offices to an ambitious work-sharing collaboration, with the goal of reutilizing each other’s work to the maximum extent possible. This commitment to maximizing the reutilization of work performed by the USPTO and UKIPO will have the advantage that it will be the offices, rather than the applicants, that initiate the priority handling of applications.