The United States Patent and Trademark Office will expedite patent applications, at no extra charge, for inventions that promise to mitigate climate change, its director announced this month.
Normally the USPTO can take two to three years to process a patent, during which time products may be labelled as “patent pending.” The agency has long offered an accelerated process that requires additional fees and support documents. Those will be waived for some patents that mitigate greenhouse gas emissions.
“There are programs where you can expedite patents, but in this important space we don’t want you to have to pay extra for that,” said Kathi Vidal, under secretary of commerce for intellectual property and Director of the USPTO, during an appearance earlier this year at the ARPA-E Energy Innovation Summit.
“We understand that especially when it comes to energy that we need to get that technology patented and we need to get it to market as soon as we can.”
The USPTO received 40,000 patent applications last year aimed at the climate crisis, more than 6 percent of all patents received. But because the new program is a pilot, it won’t be fast-tracking that many applications this year. Only 1,000 will get the free accelerated treatment.
Nor does the agency estimate how much faster products will come to market under the pilot, but the traditional acceleration process guarantees the patent examination will be complete within one year.
According to Vidal’s blog: “Applications involving technologies that mitigate climate change will be advanced out of turn (granted special status) until first action on the merits by a patent examiner, if the applications meet all program conditions. To participate, an applicant must complete a petition form with the USPTO and upload it in Patent Center. Learn more about what applications qualify for the program and how to apply on the Climate Change Mitigation Pilot Program page of the USPTO website.”
Vidal, a former patent litigator, said she accelerated the program itself so she could announce it at the summit.
“I will say that I actually had the government rush it so i could announce it on stage today so this helped be a forcing function for us getting it out there.”
