Some numbers from this week
Patent – Patently-O 2024-12-26
Summary:
by Dennis Crouch:
- On December 24, 2026, the USPTO issued 6,920 utility patents and 800 design patents. The vast majority of utility patents are published prior to issuance - this week the numbers were 94%.
- The utility allowance rate was 86% for the week - calculated as the number patented divided by the number disposed of (patented / (patented + abandoned)). 90% of abandoned cases were - as you might expect - for failure to respond to an office action. A distant #2 was failure to pay the issue fee.
- For the week, patent applications in semiconductor and display technologies (AU groups 2620, 2820) show extremely high allowance rates of 97-98%. In contrast, business methods, GUI, and AI-modeling patent applications (AU groups 3680, 2140, 2120) face much lower allowance rates around 59-62%, reflecting stricter scrutiny in these software and "abstract-idea" focused domains.
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