{"id":12807,"date":"2021-01-20T10:00:54","date_gmt":"2021-01-20T10:00:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sagaciousresearch.com\/blog\/?p=12807"},"modified":"2023-03-30T07:20:54","modified_gmt":"2023-03-30T07:20:54","slug":"reasons-why-ip-heads-patent-proofreading","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sagaciousresearch.com\/blog\/reasons-why-ip-heads-patent-proofreading","title":{"rendered":"6 Reasons Why IP Heads Need To Focus on Patent Proofreading"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

It is estimated that around 600,000 patents get filed at the USPTO office each year with a 34% cumulative increase in the issued patents over the last decade. Hence, the average pendency for a patent (which is about three years), tells us that patents are actually getting granted faster. The statistical overview shown below reflects that around 354,507 patents were issued by the USPTO office in the year 2019.<\/p>\n\n\n

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While the increase in issued patents sounds promising, it is to be noted that almost 98% of US patents have at least one mistake in them. A study<\/a> of around 2000 odd US patents was conducted and they found at least one mistake that was present in 98% of those patents, and over 50% of the mistakes were made by the USPTO during the prosecution stage. This happens because there are a lot of amendments, and to-and-fro communications (such as submission of ideas, record of assignment, updation and submission of priority information and documents) done during the prosecution of the patent application. There is also a lot of informational transaction done, which is where the errors often creep in. Therefore, it was concluded that around 50% of the errors were made by the USPTO and the rest were from the applicant\u2019s end.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Out of these errors, over 33% of these mistakes required a \u2018Certificate of Correction (CoC)\u2019. Also, 2% of the mistakes were serious enough to cause problems in the patent filing and also impacted the scope of the claims as well as their enablement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Therefore, a patent attorney or an IP head who files upto 100 patents in a year will probably witness atleast a couple of patents which have an error serious enough to cause problems, if overlooked.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Source: https:\/\/www.law360.com\/articles\/4987\/u-s-patents-riddled-with-mistakes-survey-finds<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Over the past twelve years, Sagacious IP has been instrumental in helping its clients (Attorneys at Law Firms and In-House Attorneys of the Corporates) proofread their patents, that have helped to avoid errors such as incorrect claim construction, grammar, enablement, completeness in description, and even errors having technical impact.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Luckily, there are ways to resolve such occurrence by including patent proofreading step, which can go a long way in ensuring that the patent provides the protection you deserve.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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