WASHINGTON - The US Commerce Department’s Patent and
Trademark Office (USPTO) will pilot a program to accelerate the
examination of certain “green” technology patent applications,
Secretary Gary Locke announced in a press release on Monday.
The new initiative, coming days before the United
Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, Denmark, will
accelerate the development and deployment of green technology, create
green jobs, and promote U.S. competitiveness in this vital sector.
“American competitiveness depends on innovation and
innovation depends on creative Americans developing new technology,” US
Commerce Secretary Gary Locke said. “By ensuring that many new products
will receive patent protection more quickly, we can encourage our
brightest innovators to invest needed resources in developing new
technologies and help bring those technologies to market more quickly.”
Locke
announced the USPTO pilot program at a press conference with US Energy
Secretary Steven Chu at the Commerce Department’s headquarters.
“Every day an important green tech innovation is
hindered from coming to market is another day we harm our planet and
another day lost in creating green businesses and green jobs,” Under-
Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the
USPTO David Kappos said. “Applications in this pilot program will see a
significant savings in pendency, which will help bring green
innovations to market more quickly.”
Pending patent applications in green technologies
will be eligible to be accorded special status and given expedited
examination, which will have the effect of reducing the time it takes
to patent these technologies by an average of one year. Earlier
patenting of these technologies enables inventors to secure funding,
create businesses, and bring vital green technologies into use much
sooner.
Patent applications are normally taken up for
examination in the order that they are filed. The average pendency time
for applications in green technology areas is approximately 30 months
to a first office action and 40 months to a final decision. Under the
pilot program, for the first 3,000 applications related to green
technologies in which a proper petition is filed, the agency will
examine the applications on an accelerated basis.
Carl Horton, chief Intellectual Property Counsel of General Electric, hailed the new initiative.
"We hail this initiative as an excellent incentive to
fuel further innovation of clean technology and a terrific mechanism to
speed the dissemination of these patented technologies throughout the
world,” Horton said.
Michael Sykes, an independent inventor who has spent
the last 25 years working on technology to make homes more energy
efficient, commented: “ All my inventions relate to energy and energy
inventions pay for themselves- so speeding up the process helps me as a
businessman, and helps the end user start saving.”
Additional details on the USPTO pilot program will be available in the Federal Register and via the USPTO’s website: http://www.uspto.gov.
If successful, the USPTO will examine ways to continue and expand the initiative.
