USPTO releases 2006 annual report

Just before Christmas, the United States Patent and Trademark Office released its 2006 annual report. Among the highlights:

• 332,000 patents were examined, the most ever
• 54% patent allowance rate, the lowest on record (comment: apparently the USPTO considers granting a lower percentage of patents to be good news)
• 3.5% patent allowance error rate (comment: this statistic is compiled by the "Office of Patent Quality Review," rather than by using hard statistics like examiner reversals at the Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences or patents invalidated via reexamination or litigation. The actual report is not available online, so this figure must apparently be taken on faith.)
• Average time from filing a patent application to a first office action rose to 22.6 months
• Over 378,000 trademark applications were examined, the largest number ever, and up 36% over the previous year
• The USPTO had record filings for both patents and trademarks, with over 440,000 new patent applications filed and over 354,000 new trademark applications filed
• Roughly one third of patent applications are now filed electronically. Almost all (94%) trademark applications are filed electronically.