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[George]

406,302 patent applications and 323,501 applications for trademark registration.

CommunityDispatch.com

[Cibola]

In the January, 2006 issue of Intellectual Property Today, attorneys Thomas J. Van Gilder and Carl A. Kukkonen cited to a document on the webpage of the United States Patent and Trademark Office [USPTO] for the proposition that "patent filings have grown from 353,394 to 406,302, an increase of nearly 15%, from FY 2002 to FY 2005." In footnote 3 of their article, they carefully provided the page number of the document and the link to the document: See USPTO 2005 Annual Report at 61, http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/com/annual/2005/2005annualreport.pdf.

For some time, one will find at page 61 of the above-identified link a table stating that there were 409,532 filings in FY 2005. One will not find an explanation of why the previous number of 406,302 is gone.

[Jonathan]

This is obviously continuing evidence of a vast PTO conspiracy to do something we are not privy to.

[Cibola]

Numbers are not the only thing the USPTO is juggling.  From a board concerning the rulemaking proposal on continuing applications:

At the ABA meeting in Boston [ABA section on IP law, June 22, 2006], Solicitor Whealan made it clear that reducing patent pendency/backlog was NOT the reason behind the proposed "No continuations past one without our permission" rule. Instead, it is being promulgated to prevent applicants from surprising the public with new claims in a continuation several years after the filing date.

The numbers change and the rationales change.

[Isaac]

To be fair to the PTO, their proposal has always mentioned the public notice issue involved with continuations.   One problem with trying to sort out the PTOs rationale is that much of the proposal lumps together continuations and RCEs as one issue even though they are not used in the same way.   I believe the reason for the lumping is that the PTO sees the need to prevent continuations from being used to circumvent the limits on RCEs.

But there seems to be far more public support for limiting continuations.

[Cibola]

RCEs, not continuations, have been the most prevalent form of continuing application in both FY2004 and FY2005.  

"Second" continuing applications are of the order 5%, so that even if they were eliminated completely such elimination would not end the backlog problem.

What is your basis for stating support for limiting continuations?

[JimIvey]

I have a very simple solution for reducing the number of RCEs filed.  Stop making new grounds of rejection in final Office Actions!!

If the PTO did that, my RCE filings would be reduced by about 90% or more.  And, the majority of those that remained would be from applications that I didn't write but I'm prosecuting.

Regards.