(Follow-up postings are here and here and here.)
Last month I blogged about USPTO’s backlog of undecided PPH petitions. These are the petitions in cases where the applicant is asking the USPTO to place a patent application on the Patent Prosecution Highway because the application has already been found patentable in some other patent office.
USPTO’s internal standard is to rule upon such a petition within two months of when it was filed. When I blogged about this last month, we had petitions filed as long ago as August 26, 2014 that had not yet been decided. By now we have over a dozen PPH petitions that were filed more than three months ago and remain outstanding as of today. The August 26 petition remains outstanding. The backlog is worsening.
How old is your oldest PPH petition that has not yet been decided?
Just called about petitions filed in October. The backlog is 4 to 6 months.