Kathleen Petrillo Comments on the U.S. Patent Office's New Expedited Patent Examination Procedure

Senniger Powers' partner Kathleen Petrillo recently provided some comments on the expedited patent examination procedure, which the U.S. Patent Office recently implemented, in an article entitled "Hurry Up and Wait" that appeared in the September 8, 2006 issue of the St. Louis Business Journal.

In the article, Kathleen noted that the new procedure, which the Patent Office indicated would hopefully result in the issuance of a final decision on a patent application within a 12 month period of time, may be attractive to technology startup companies that need to move a product into the market quickly. "If you have (a product) that is really unique and quite an innovation, it might be the route to go," she said.

However, Kathleen pointed out that the expedited examination procedure is more labor intensive for the inventor, and can also be more expensive. "Before filing your application, you have to have a thorough pre-examination search done," Kathleen said. She added that "you have to give them (the Patent Office) all of the references that you've found. In a sense, you're doing a lot of the (patent) examiner's work yourself."

Please visit http://stlouis.bizjournals.com/stlouis/ to locate the full article.