ndrosen | The Red Queen’s Race, Special Edition

I will make a special observation this week. I began work at the Patent Office on August 31, 1998. A bit more than a year later, U.S. Patent 6,000,000 was issued, on December 7, 2024. On June 4, 2024, U.S. Patent 12,000,000. A majority of the utility patents which the Patent Office has issued over its more than two hundred year history have been issued within the past twenty-five years, during the course of my own employment at the U.S. Patent Office. I don’t know how many of the patents issued from the six millionth through the twelve millionth I was involved in, but one in ten thousand is an order of magnitude estimate.

Now, as to this past week, I didn’t get any amendments, so I’m still at zero cases in my Amended docket. I did a first action on my oldest Regular New application, so that’s something accomplished, and now I’ll try to do a couple more during the next week.