The USPTO announced a new pilot program that could streamline examination, improve examination efficiency, and help the USPTO use its examination resources more efficiently. The “Pre-Docketing Notice” pilot program also offers significant benefits to patent applicants, providing a timely opportunity to trim portfolios to save costs or align portfolios with current commercial objectives, which may have shifted in the months years since the patent application was filed.
The “Pre-Docketing Notice” Pilot Program
The USPTO’s current “First Office Action Pendency” statistics indicate the average time from an application’s filing date to the date of its first Office Action is about 22 months, but this pre-examination waiting period varies widely depending on the technology and examiner workloads. Although the USPTO recently restored its “first action estimator” functionality in Patent Center, an applicant has to proactively look up the estimated time to examination for each application,
