Patent Application Backlog Exceeds 1.2 Million

Gene Quinn writing a post titled, "How to Fix the USPTO" on November 21, 2008 at his IPWatchdog blog states:

The United States Patent & Trademark Office has just released the 2008 Performance and Accountability Report, which is the annual report explaining the activities of the Office during fiscal year 2008.  While so much of the report is a self congratulating look back at what the Dudas Administration believes it effectively achieved over the past year, the report should be anything but self congratulating given the dire situation that the US Patent System faces moving forward.  As of the end of Fiscal Year 2008 there are 1,208,076 patent applications still pending at the Patent Office.  At the end of Fiscal Year 1997 the number of pending applications left over was only 275,295, so over the last 11 years there has been a  439% increase in the number of pending applications left over that could not be resolved.  That is alarming.  Each year since 1997 this number has gone up, first going over the 1 million mark in 2006.

See Gene's proposal for a solution here.