Date: Mon, 08 Apr 2013 19:39:15 -0400
From: mark <whitroth at 5-cent.us>
To: undisclosed-recipients:;
Subject: [WSFA] Study Suggests Patent Office Lowered Standards To Cope With Backlog
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at KeithLynch.net>

Story:
"...a new study suggests another explanation for the declining backlog:
the patent office may have lowered its standards, approving many patents
that would have been (and in some cases, had been) rejected under the
administration of George W. Bush. The authors, Chris Cotropia and Cecil
Quillen of the University of Richmond and independent researcher Ogden
Webster used Freedom of Information Act requests to obtain detailed data
about the fate of patent applications considered by the USPTO since
1996. They found that the "allowance rate," the fraction of applications
approved by the patent office, declined steadily from 2001 and 2009. But
in the last four years there's been a sharp reversal, with a 2012
allowance rate about 20 percent higher than it was in 2009."
                                -- 30 --
<http://news.slashdot.org/story/13/04/08/1345253/study-suggests-patent-office-lowered-standards-to-cope-with-backlog>