Credit must be given to Director David Kappos of the US Patent & Trademark Office for introducing the “Patent Dashboard”.   

The way it works is to provide visual indicators for key measures, such as number of months to a first action examination (26.2), number of applications not yet examined (728,055), staffing level (6,038 examiners), etc.

The really great part of this is that as data changes, the gauges show this… in a visually pleasing and informative manner..

So far, the key indicators are:

First Office Action Pendency — average Number of months from patent application filing date to mailing date of firsst Office action

Traditional Total Pendency — average number of months from filing date to final disposition (e.g., issue, abandonment)

Patent Application Backlog — number of new patent applications in the pipeline

Utility, Plant, and Reissue (UPR) Patent Application Production Units — total number of production units (i.e., first action + number of disposals / 2)

Average Actions Per Disposal — average number of actions until final disposition

Utility, Plant, and Reissue (UPR) Patent Applications Allowed — allowance rate

Patent Examiners on Staff — total number of patent examiners

Patent Examination Quality — a measure of quality based on a random review of cases

Pendency Including Requests for Reconsideration (RCE) — pendency measurement including RCE’s

Inventory Position — number of months it would take to examine every unexamined application currently pending

Pendency from Application Filing to Board Decision — number of months from filing date to final Board decision

Pendency of Requests for Continued Examinations (RCEs) — pendency from filing date to final disposition of the RCE

Pendency of Continuation Applications — pendency from filing date of parent to final dispostion of the continuation application

Pendency of Divisiional Applications — pendency from filing date of parent to final dispostion of the divisiional application

To see the current Patent Dashboard, visit the US PTO’s Data Visualization Center.