U.S. patent system is fine now --- no need for utility patents

(Tyler, Candidate for Juris Doctor, University of Colorado Law School, 2014; Bachelor of Science, Chemical Engineering and Economics, Northwestern University, 2011.“Would Utility Models Improve American Innovation? Evidence From Brazil, Germany, And The United States,” pg online @ http://www.jthtl.org/content/articles/V12I1/JTHTLv12i1_Boschert.PDF //pa-ef)

The idea that the United States might benefit from the implementation of a utility model system, though not without its merits and its proponents,81 suffers from several flaws. As an initial matter, despite much hand-wringing in the press (not all of it unfounded), American technological innovation is not, in fact, in a state of all-out crisis. Although the United States ranks squarely in the middle of the pack in the IEI,82 this is largely driven by weakness in what might be termed "creative" or "non-technological" innovation; America ranks 75th (out of 87 countries with data) in national office trademark registrations83 and 41st (out of 62 countries with data) in Madrid Agreement trademark registrations.84 If the IEI were recalculated using only the "knowledge and technology" pillar of the innovation output score, the United States would rank 31st overall85—not an excellent showing, but a substantially better one.

Furthermore, the performance of the American patent system has recently showed signs of improvement, at least in terms of patent pendency, without the implementation of utility models. The USPTO's time to first office action, though still much too high at 20 months, has fallen by eight months since August 2011, and the backlog of 608,000 applications is the smallest in well over two years.86 The USPTO's own Quality Composite Score, which combines seven individual metrics to obtain a picture of how the USPTO is performing as a whole, stood at 72.4 in the fourth quarter of 2012, more than forty points higher (on a 0- to-100 scale) than just a year earlier.87 These improvements may be expected to continue as the Office opens new branch offices in Dallas, Denver, Detroit, and Silicon Valley over the next two years.88 As the USPTO begins to set its house in order after many years of subpar performance, the necessity of further reform may be questioned.