Commissioner of Patents on Way Out
This just in: the US Patent and Trademark Office has announced that current Commissioner for Patents John Doll, who has been at the agency for decades, will resign on October 2. That is months before his contract was supposed to be up, and given all the "we thank John for his public service and wish him well" language in the announcement, it sounds as though he was pushed out.
Doll was often controversial and, according to plugged-in sources, was the main driver behind the proposed patent rules changes that raised some significant animosity in some quarters and which the agency showed signs of backing off in July.
But I do wonder whether this is all about the rules, or if it could have deeper drivers. For months I've been hearing about an Inspector General investigation into whether the USPTO had been manipulating the operational statistics it reports to Congress. Insiders, both current and former, as well as at least one internal memo have suggested that the agency has put checking quality of patents on hold in the early part of its fiscal fourth quarters to keep its definition of quality looking strong. And some of the ways it has handled data, like showing a rapidly declining number of allowed patents when what really appeared to be happening was that applications were abandoned for effectively new versions of the applications through the so-called RCE process, have been highly questionable. Although the agency could report having cut the number of poor quality patents, in reality the overall acceptance rate for patents may be no different than it has been for literally decades.
New USPTO head David Kappos has already nominated a long-time USPTO executive, Robert Stoll as Doll's replacment, as well as naming Margaret Focarino as Deputy Commissioner for Patents. It sounds as though there may be some changes in the works at the agency, though whether they will be enough to let it catch up to a growing mountain of a backlog without alienating inventors and patent attorneys remains to be seen.