If the USPTO is short of funding, patents quality will decrease to keep the agency afloat
Casey Windsor ’23, April 25, “Steps to Improve Patent Quality at the USPTO,” THE OVERSIGHT PROJECT, accessed July 7, 2024, https://oversightproject.org/2023/04/25/steps-to-improve-patent-quality-at-the-uspto/
One recommendation on how the Act could be improved would be to have GAO evaluate if Congress should increase the USPTO’s budget. The USPTO relies on fees generated by patent applications and patent maintenance to fund itself, leading some studies to question whether this gives the USPTO an incentive to grant more patents than it should. Increasing the USPTO’s budget could also allow them to hire more patent examiners. As of October 2022, the USPTO employed approximately 8,000 patent examiners but had a backlog of over 700,000 patent applications waiting to be examined. Adding more examination time and matching applications with examiners based on expertise may not help if the supply of examiners is not close to meeting the demand of patent applications. If the USPTO is focused on reducing its backlog, then the 8,000 current patent examiners will never have enough time to thoroughly examine a patent application and the approval of low-quality patents will continue.