Ilan Barzilay Quoted in Intellectual Property Law360
"Lawyers Not Sold On New Patent Examiner Rules"

Ilan Barzilay was quoted in the June 25, 2010 Intellectual Property Law360 article, "Lawyers Not Sold On New Patent Examiner Rules." The article discussed how a proposal by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) to change the standards by which patent examiners are evaluated may not be the answer to reducing the country's growing pendency of patent applications, and may clash with other programs already in place. According to the article, the Patent Office Professional Association (POPA), a labor union that represents patent examiners, will vote this summer on changes that would alter examiners' performance appraisal plans by giving them more discretion in managing work flow and encouraging more interviews with inventors.

The article noted that the task force that teamed up to unveil the proposal on June 16, 2010, which included USPTO and POPA representatives, said "the plan aimed to align the priorities of the agency with those of its workers by incentivizing quality of work and by reducing a backlog that has shot well beyond 725,000 pending patent applications." The article also pointed out that the proposed new system could also disrupt with time frames already in place to prioritize certain types of patent applications, namely older applications, requests for continued examination and amended cases.

But according to Ilan, the USPTO should be able to encourage discretion while still finding a way to make sure important work gets done in a timely fashion. He added, “It may require instituting a pilot program in a certain sector of the office before rolling it out to the full office, but I think it's manageable. It's an interesting question, because there is that tendency to work on the fun projects first.” Ilan said he generally supported the various programs and proposals recently unveiled by the USPTO, namely its changes to the examiner count system and its proposed three-track examination process, even if they're better on paper than in practice. He also pointed out that he "think[s] all the changes that have been floated, even the unsuccessful ones, have been good attempts. I say that because they're clearly making a very real effort to get to the heart of the backlog issue.”