USPTO Wants Input on How to Better Commercialize Innovation

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) today issued a Request for Comments (RFC) that will be published in the Federal Register tomorrow seeking input from the public on how to better incentivize commercialization of innovation, particularly in green and critical or emerging technologies.

According to the RFC, the comments received “will be used to evaluate possibilities for amplifying the impact of our current work, and to explore new ways to support the transfer of innovation to the marketplace.”

The RFC specifically asks respondents not to address controversial topics like the Biden Administration’s December 2023 proposal to expand march-in rights under the Bayh-Dole Act, the Office’s proposals on “robust and reliable patents,” and ongoing negotiations over an expansion of the waiver on IP rights under the Agreement on Trade-Related aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS). The RFC explains:

“While the USPTO is proud of our recent initiatives to ensure robustness and reliability of IP, as well as the role the agency is playing in the current dialogue on Bayh-Dole rights, pandemic preparedness, and Trade-Related aspects of Intellectual Property Rights waivers, those topics are beyond the scope of this request for comment. Here, we specifically focus on opportunities for positive public impact by bringing innovation to market through commercialization, for example via the licensing of IP rights.”

Much of the notice describes the USPTO’s existing programs aimed at incentivizing technology transfer and commercialization, such as the Patents 4 Partnerships platform, the Climate Change Mitigation Pilot Program, the Green Energy Innovation Expo, the Office’s partnership with the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) on its WIPO GREEN platform, the Semiconductor Technology Pilot Program, the artificial intelligence (AI) and emerging technology (ET) partnership, and more.

The Climate Change Mitigation Pilot Program was announced in June 2022 and covers non-provisional patent applications related to “technologies that mitigate climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions”.

The Semiconductor Technology Pilot was launched in November 2023 and is meant to support the objectives of President Biden’s Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors (CHIPS) and Science Act, which was signed into law in August 2022.

The RFC ultimately suggests 15 questions for commenters to respond to, including what changes to IP policies and practices would help to streamline commercialization; what challenges exist to commercialization; and what laws or practices in other countries might be helpful as a model, among others.

The USPTO said it is being supported in its mission to “unlock the potential of intellectual property for the public good” by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), and the National Science Foundation (NSF). Comments will be due 60 days after publication in the Federal Register.

“We must encourage and accelerate the transfer of technological advances to the marketplace to grow jobs, lift communities, bolster our national security and solve for local and world problems such as the effects of climate change or future global health challenges,” said USPTO Director Kathi Vidal in a statement.

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