Heavy Caseload of 120,000 Cases Urgently Waiting to be Examined by Patent Examiners.

 　The Ministry of Economic Affairs’ Intellectual Property Office (IPO) seriously lacking the examiners manpower, currently a caseload of 120,000 cases is waiting to be examined.  On average, an invention patent case will have to wait for two and a half years before being examined.  Caseload accumulates rapidly in the fields of communication, photonics, and chemical as a result of shortage of manpower and fast increasing in the number of applications in these fields.

　Unexamined applications (or patent application backlog) has accumulated up to 120,000 cases due to the severely understaffed of the in-house patent examiners, nine technical examiners are temporarily transferred to the IP court, and the number of external examiners has sharply decreased from 700 to 80.  In recent years, the number of patent applications comes to around 80,000 cases per year but only closed about 30,000 cases per year.  In other words, the number of unexamined applications is accumulating very rapidly every year.

　The unexamined patent applications filed in the year 2005 is currently under the process of accelerated examination.  Part of the patent applications filed during the first half of the year 2006 has entered the process of examination, patent applications after that time period are all waiting to be examined.

　Wang Mei-hua, director general of IPO, indicated that the current manpower of 270 patent examiners is heavily understaffed to close the patent applications in a timely manner.  Ms. Wang estimated that IPO would need additional 230 patent examiners in order to finish examining all the pending patent applications.  The high turnover rate of patent examiners in the fields of communication, semi-conductor, electrical and electrical engineering is another factor for protracting the patent examination speed.

　In consideration of the fast growing backlog of unexamined patent applications, Ms. Wang, director general of IPO, indicated that IPO will try to cut short the process of examination.  For example, relevant documents with respect to the new application granted a patent in foreign countries can be submitted as evidences in order to expedite the examination process.

Status on caseload of IPO patent applications
Item	Content
No. of patent examiner	About 270 patent examiner
Additional manpower needed	About 230 short of patent examiners, in order to gradually reducing the number of external examiners
No. of external examiner	80 external examiner
No. of new applications on average per year	80,000 cases
No. of cases closed per year	30,000 cases
Current unexamined patent applications	120,000 cases
Status of unexamined patent applications from 2005 to 2008	Patent applications filed before 2004 were all closed. Patent applications filed in 2005 were all under the process of accelerated examination. Small part of the patent applications filed in 2006 is under the process of examinations.  All patent applications filed in 2007 are unexamined.  All patent applications filed in 2008 are unexamined.
Source: IPO

(2008.6)
/DC