Trademark Office Launches Trademark Dashboard

By: Mark R. Malek

You may recall that I posted a couple of articles (see here and here)regarding the new Patent Dashboard that was launched by the PTO.  The Patent Dashboard was a visualization tool that allowed you to view the progress of several different factors on the patent side of the PTO.  For example, and the dial that gets the most attention, one can see how the backlog is coming along.  As you may recall, the patent application backlog, at one time, was upwards of 900,000 patent applications.  Yes, 900,000.  That is not a typo.  I am pleased to report after viewing the dashboard just a few minutes ago, that the backlog is now down to a little over 700,000.

Today, on Director Kappos’ blog, in a guest post by the Commissioner for Trademarks, Deborah Cohn, the Trademark Office announced the launch of the Trademark Dashboard.  The Trademark Dashboard can be viewed here.  All I can say is – WOW!  What a difference.  The Trademark Dashboard is geared more towards when an Applicant can expect a first Office Action on their trademark application.  Any guesses?  No?  2.7 months.  Not years, months!  I am floored by that.  I understand that it takes significantly longer to examine a patent application than it does to examine a trademark application, but the disparity between 2.7 months on the trademark side and 25.3 months on the patent side is ridiculous.  By the way, on some technologies, you can only hope, pray and dream to get something as quickly as 25 months.

Thanks Commissioner Cohn for launching the Trademark Dashboard to keep us all updated.  I can only hope that somehow, the PTO is able to keep more of its funds so that it can decrease the pendency of patent applications to try to catch up with the Trademark Office.