Posts Tagged: "fee diversion"

How the AIA requires the USPTO to be a patent system arms dealer

Not only does the Patent Office handsomely charge for the acquisition and maintenance of a patent, they also handsomely charges for the right to challenge those patents after issue. On its face this creates a perverted incentive. The arms dealer nature of how the AIA has transformed the Patent Office is not lost on many within the industry. Add in the insecurity of the USPTO budget and the fact that the Patent Trial and Appeal board (PTAB) directly reports to the Director, thereby not enjoying any true judicial autonomy (at least on paper) and you would be hard pressed to have come up with a more conflicted structure or system.

Kasich, Patents and the Middle Class

What Kasich doesn’t explain, however, is how he achieved a balanced budget. As part of the Kasich-Clinton deal the budget of the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) was raided for additional money to help plug shortfalls elsewhere. The appropriations cap placed on the USPTO for fiscal year 1998 was $691 million, and according to the IPO $199 million was collected but diverted, which means 22.4% of fee collections were taken from the USPTO in FY 1998 and used for other purposes… Republicans, including Kasich, love to lay claim to the Reagan legacy. But President Reagan was a supporter of the patent system. He never would have tolerated raiding the USPTO budget for any reason. We know that because it was President Reagan that demanded a build up of the USPTO as part of his overall strategy to make America great again and compete with the Japanese for technology dominance.

What Mattered in 2015: Insiders Reflect on Biggest Moments in IP

This year our panel of industry insiders is quite diverse, with commentary from Bob Stoll (Drinker Biddle), Ashley Keller (Gerchen Keller), Paul Morinville (US Inventor), Alden Abbot (Heritage Foundation), Marla Grossman (American Continental Group) and Steve Kunin (Oblon). Unlike last year where there was near unanimous agreement that the Supreme Court’s decision in Alice v. CLS Bank was the biggest moment of the year, this year our panel of industry experts focused on a variety of different matters. There was one recurring theme, however. The inability of patent reform to advance on Capitol Hill was undoubtedly one of the biggest stories of the year.

House Judiciary approves Innovation Act despite clear lack of consensus

Dissent among members of Congress on the nature of the Innovation Act was evident from the opening remarks of the committee’s two ranking members. Congressman Bob Goodlatte (R-VA), the House Judiciary Committee Chairman and the Innovation Act’s major sponsor, stated that the Innovation Act would “ensure that the patent system lives up to its constitutional underpinnings” while targeting the abusive patent litigation which has been central to the debate on patent trolls. The ranking Democratic member of the committee, Congressman John Conyers (D-MI), said the bill was overly broad and yet it didn’t adequately address issues significant to this debate, including abusive demand letters and the ending of fee diversions from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s budget.

The Biggest Problem for USPTO has been Fee Diversion

During a free-flowing conversation the former leaders of the Patent Office agreed on a number of items, including the biggest problem for the Patent Office over the last generation: fee diversion. Both Dickinson and Mossinghoff pointed to fee diversion as a constant and continuing challenge. Dickinson recalled one particular budget where nearly $250 million was diverted from the Patent Office budget, a huge sum given that at the time the USPTO annual budget hovered around $1 billion.