USPTO News

USPTO Deep-Sixes Top Ten List - the Office quietly announced yesterday that, beginning this year, the USPTO will no longer release an annual list of top 10 organizations receiving the most U.S. patents.

The 2006 data will be available in "raw data" form around April in the annual “Patenting by Organizations” report on the agency's web site (www.uspto.gov). The report will profile U.S. patents granted to U.S. and international organizations receiving 40 or more patents each year, but will not be published in a "top ten" format.

In some rather odd reasoning, the USPTO's position is that, by ceasing publication of the top 10 list, the USPTO will be able to focus the public's attention on quality over quantity by discouraging any perception that "more is better." Of course, it will be a simple matter for other parties to divine this information from the raw data and publish the findings.

USPTO Announces Priority Document Exchange Program - On January 16, 2007, the United States Patent and Trademark Office, along with the European Patent Office (EPO), implemented a new service to allow certified copies of patent application priority documents to be exchanged between the two offices electronically. The new service, which is free of charge to applicants, is the result of a 2005 agreement between the USPTO and the European Patent Office. Priority document exchange will get underway between the USPTO and the Japan Patent Office (JPO) later this year.

See announcement here.