USPTO Proposes Controversial Patent Filing Changes

In an effort to streamline the patenting process, the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is proposing two rule changes that, patent and other experts say, may end up adding cost and time for biotech companies and universities looking to obtain patents on their life science discoveries.

The proposed regulations, published earlier this year in the Federal Register,1 would limit the number of times inventors can request continuing examinations on their patent applications and also limit to 10 the number of representative claims contained in any single patent submission. The new regulations, USPTO commissioner for patents John Doll says, would reduce the workload on examiners and speed up the time to issue patents.

For years the USPTO has been struggling to get out from under a backlog of increased case loads. Nearly one-third of the 355,000 new patent applications received in fiscal 2004 involved resubmissions of previous applications. Currently, when ...