The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is revising its Green Technology Pilot Program to allow more categories of technology to be eligible for expedited processing.
Eligibility for the pilot program, which was designed to promote the development of green technologies, had previously been limited to applications within a select number of U.S. classifications. The USPTO today removes that requirement.
The program was initially limited to inventions in certain classifications
in order to assist the USPTO in balancing the additional workload and to
gauge the resources needed for the program. The USPTO has determined
that the classification requirement is unnecessary because the workload
has been balanced with other mechanisms, and the requirement was causing
the denial of petitions for a number of green technology applications
that would have otherwise qualified for the program.
To date,
more than 950 requests have been filed by applicants who wish for their
application to be eligible for the Green Technology Pilot Program. Only
342 of those have been granted, primarily because many of the inventions
weren’t in classifications that were eligible. The lifting of the
classification requirements is expected to allow many more applications
to be eligible for the program.
By allowing more inventions related to green technologies to be accorded special status and receive expedited examination, the Green Technology Pilot Program is expected to accelerate the development and deployment of green technology, create clean energy jobs and promote U.S. competitiveness in the sector.
Director of the USPTO David Kappos said there has been a "tremendous" amount of interest in the Green Technology Pilot Program so far.
Under the Green Technology Pilot Program, pending patent applications in green technologies are eligible to be accorded special status and given expedited examination. Patent applications are normally taken up for examination in the order that they are filed. Under the pilot program, for the first 3,000 applications related to green technologies in which a grantable petition is filed, the agency will examine the applications on an expedited basis.
Additional information on the Green Technology Pilot Program can be found at the link below.
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