Bill To Provide PTO With Additional Funding Advances
The House late Wednesday evening passed legislation that would allow the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to retain funding from fees it collects in fiscal year 2010 above the amount allocated by Congress. The Senate could take up a similar bill possibly as soon as Thursday.
The bill would allow the PTO to keep $129 million in extra fees it expects to collect this year. It would be offset by cancelling the same amount in unused funds from the Census Bureau, which like the PTO is also a Commerce Department agency.
The PTO's annual appropriation from Congress is based on fees the agency estimates it will collect. Fees for 2010 are now expected to come in above the $1.887 billion level set by Congress in the agency's annual spending bill.
The legislation is backed by business groups and authorizers, who say it will help the agency begin to address the massive backlog of pending patent applications. Brian Pomper, executive director of the Innovation Alliance, which includes such firms as Dolby Laboratories and Qualcomm, praised the measure saying, "Greater funding means that patent quality can increase and the 36 month backlog of unexamined patents can decrease. The stakeholder community knows that improving the ability of American innovators to obtain patents, means that U.S. manufacturing and overall competitiveness is enhanced."
During House consideration of the bill, House Commerce, Justice and Science Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman Alan Mollohan, D-W.Va., echoed this view. The additional funding "will begin to help the agency address the ongoing patent pendency and backlogs," he said. "What this bill will not do is fix the underlying structural flaws in USPTO's revenue mechanisms that are the major cause for the patent pendency and backlog problems that have plagued USPTO for years."
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