The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has seen a dramatic drop in the time it takes to fill out and the accuracy of petitions thanks to its nine-month-old ePetitions system, USPTO Commissioner for Patents Bob Stoll wrote on the agency blog.
Stoll wrote that non web-based petition filings can take up to 30 days to be decided and 38% are dismissed for insufficient or incorrect information. On the other hand, ePetitions are granted immediately and the web-based interface ensures that petitioners correctly submit all required items.
“The time savings and accuracy using ePetitions is especially advantageous for critical petitions where an automatic petition grant could reduce delays in the restoration of patent rights, expedite a withdrawal from representation and redirect Office correspondence to the new correspondence address, and initiate the revival of an abandoned application to save patent term adjustment time,” Stoll wrote.
“ePetitions represents a major step forward for us providing the USPTO with an opportunity to improve its operational efficiency by reallocating resources and by eliminating the time required to receive, upload to PAIR (Patent Application Information Retrieval), docket, and decide petitions, as well as any rework associated repeating these steps for dismissals.”
