Patent office continues to chip away at overhaul

As the Patent and Trademark Office prepares to celebrate its bicentennial this week, the agency is confronting major challenges to become more competitive and to meet the goals envisioned by America's founders, said the head of the office in a Tuesday speech.

Framers of the Constitution "knew that America could never move from being an agrarian colony to an economic and technological power ... if there wasn't the incentive built into our system of laws for inventors to invent and creators to create," James Rogan, undersecretary of Commerce for intellectual property and director of the PTO, told an audience at the Heritage Foundation.

But the office is facing "significant" problems as it seeks to reinvent its system for granting patents by rearranging fee structures, changing patent review processes and hiring more skilled workers, he said.

Born of intense internal reviews, Rogan called the PTO's Strategic 21st Century Plan vital to restoring competitiveness in the federal agency that protects one of the biggest sectors of the economy.

Under the plan, the PTO would increase patent filing fees and create new procedures to outsource the burdensome "searching" process involved in patent examinations. Business and inventors, for example, could hire a private search firm to verify the "newness" of their invention before they file the application, saving the PTO significant resources.

Rogan also said that under the new regime, more than $120 million would be redirected to helping the office reduce a backlog of more than 400,000 patent applications. The agency also is encouraging electronic filing, which would allow inventors to submit a patent application in the United States while concurrently offering it to patent authorities in Europe and Japan, for example.

But while the agency is moving to harmonize some aspects of its daily business with counterparts abroad, Rogan said he does not foresee the United States adopting the European and Japanese "first-to-file" system-as opposed to awarding American patents to the first inventor.

While many intellectual property proponents remain concerned that Congress or the administration will continue to divert patent fees for other purposes, Rogan expressed hope that improving the effectiveness of the PTO will "remove the rationale" for diverting its funding. The debate, he noted, "has reached the highest levels of the administration."

Rogan also weighed in on the challenge to a federal copyright extension law that was reviewed by the Supreme Court last week. He said that when he was a House lawmaker from California, he "was a supporter of the [Sonny Bono Copyright Extension Act]," and he still supports it.