Patent Office Focuses on Backlog as GAO Flags Quality Issues (1)

A government audit examining tradeoffs between the quality and quantity of issued patents underscored a tension the US Patent and Trademark Office has tried to balance for decades.

The PTO is facing a growing backlog of applications—currently over 830,000—and has focused on cutting down wait times for pending patents. But its effort to clear inventory and work faster comes at the expense of quality, the Government Accountability Office said in a recent report, highlighting the same issue it noted nearly a decade ago.

The Patent Office acknowledged that balancing quality, time, and cost is a “well-documented challenge that ubiquitously faces” ...