U.S. Patent Office gets funding increase

By Grant Gross, IDG News Service, 01/03/08

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The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has received a budget increase of about 9 percent for the government's 2008 fiscal year, prompting praise from some tech groups.

The USPTO received President George Bush's full funding request of $1.9 billion in a budget bill passed by the U.S. Congress in mid-December and signed by Bush the day after Christmas. The Innovation Alliance, a trade group that includes Qualcomm, storage vendor LSI Logic and several small tech companies, applauded the budget increase, saying the money would help the USPTO better examine patent applications.

"In the face of significant budget challenges that saw many federal agencies' funding cut or held stagnant, Congress' choice to fully fund the PTO at the levels requested by the Administration demonstrates the value that our government leadership places on strong, high-quality patents to America's continued innovation," the Innovation Alliance said in a statement.

Patent Office funding has been one piece of a contentious debate in Congress over the past year on what changes are needed for the U.S. patent system. Several large tech vendors, including Microsoft and IBM, have supported legislation that would make sweeping changes to the U.S. patent system but would largely leave funding issues unaddressed.

Most groups involved in the patent debate agree that the USPTO needs better examinations in order to avoid issuing bad patents, and critics point to frequent questionable patents, including a 2005 patent for an antigravity device. Amazon.com's one-click ordering patent also has been widely criticized.

But the Patent Reform Act, passed by the House of Representatives in September, "doesn't get to patent quality at all," said Susan Mora, spokeswoman for the Innovation Alliance. "There are significant problems with it all around."

The patent legislation should include prohibitions against government budgeters taking patent fees to fund other agencies, Mora said. Congress ended the practice of patent fee diversion in 2004, but there's nothing stopping lawmakers from once against taking fees from the USPTO in a budget crunch, she said.

The IDG News Service is a Network World affiliate.

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