The United States Patent and Trademark Office struggles with a major backlog of patent applications.
According to a story in The New York Times, inventors of green technology may have a leg up. Under a program that started in December, they can request that their patents be put through an accelerated queue. The purpose of the program is to help them raise money, start up businesses and bring products to the market more rapidly.
Last Tuesday, Skyline Solar, a solar panel builder in Silicon Valley, was awarded one of the first patents to emerge from the queue.
“When a company says a patent is pending, things are uncertain. This gives us certainty,” said Bob MacDonald, the chief executive officer of Skyline. “And it helps get new investors comfortable with the intellectual property,” he added.
Skyline filed its patent application in April 2008 and petitioned to move it into the accelerated queue in December.
It’s a remarkable speed-up: it had typically taken two to three years for a green technology patent application to be reviewed.
Still, the program could be improved, said Eric Lane, a patent attorney at Luce, Forward, Hamilton & Scripps in San Diego who runs a blog on green tech patents.
“There are some major shortcomings,” he said. “The program is not as strong as ones in other countries, like the U.K. and Korea.”
For one thing, if an inventor’s application was not already in the system by December 2009, it does not qualify for the accelerated program. What is more, Mr. Lane said, some applications that are clearly green tech do not fall within the office’s strict definition of what qualifies.
The program and recent heavy federal investments in green technology through federal grants and subsidies nonetheless reflect the Obama administration’s support for the sector’s growth.
Photo by USPTO.