Article from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel with interesting numbers.
Highlights:
-Many of the missing jobs – hundres of thousands or possibly millions – are buried under the backlog of 1.2 million unprocessed patent applicatoins that have accumulated over the past 10 years at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
-A single U.S. patent can create three to ten jobs.
-Nothaft estimates more than 2 million new jobs are buried in the backlog
-“Innovation is our competitve advantage… It’s not manufacturing costs. It’s not labor costs. It’s innovation and our ability to protect those innovations and turn those innovations into products.”
Filed under: Patent Reform, patents, United States Patent and Trademark Office | Tagged: backlog, job creation, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Nothaft, Patent and Trademark Office, patents, USPTO, William Merritt |
Patently BIOtech 
Unfortunately, until Congress ends its recently-acquired habit of fee diversion (aka, raiding the coffers of the USPTO and leaving it to operate on a shoestring budget), there would appear to be little hope of making a significant dent in the patent application backlog. I am at least heartened by news of the Coburn amendment to the patent reform bill currently under consideration. Even if no fee diversion provisions pass the legislature this year, nevertheless an increasing number of congresspersons “get it.” Eventually, the attention paid to the issue will, hopefully, put an end to Congress’s bad habit in the long run.
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