USPTO Performance and Accountability Report - U.S. Patent and ...

E-petitions allow applicants to obtain real-time
decisions on their petitions by automating the
handling of common electronically filed petitions.
E-petitions now account for more than a third of
petitions received by the USPTO.
The USPTO’s network infrastructure has been upgraded
with connectivity to the internet at 3GBps, providing
Internet Service Provider (ISP)-grade network
bandwidth to our examiners. This ensures that teleworkers
have the highest quality remote access into
their examination tools, and it substantially improves
the USPTO’s ability to support high definition video
conferences between examiners and applicants.
The USPTO continues to provide and enhance the
tools for applicants’ use for patent application filing.
The use of electronic filings as shown in Table 9
continues to rise, now at 97.1 percent, from last year
when 93.1 percent of applications were filed
electronically.
TABLE 9 Measure: Patent Applications
Filed Electronically
FISCAL YEAR TARGET ACTUAL
Target Met.
FIGURE 11 Various Patent Metrics
2008 69.0% 71.7%
2009 80.0% 82.4%
2010 90.0% 89.5%
2011 92.0% 93.1%
2012 96.0% 97.1 1
2013 97.0% 2
2014 97.0% 2
1 Preliminary data and is expected to be final by December
2012 and will be reported in the FY 2013 PAR.
2 Outyear targets subject to change.
Applications Awaiting First Action FY 2008 – FY 2012
MANAGEMENT’S DISCUSSION AND ANALYSIS
The improvements and increased efficiencies can
be seen in some of our metrics in Figure 11.
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