The IPO Daily News today trumpets support for additional funding for the $2 billion-plus Patent Office. Why?

Before going on grand and glorious plans to flood the Office with ever more Examiners, let’s harvest the low hanging fruit that will save time and money and lead to increased efficiencies.

The “NIRC” Paradigm: As one matter, note the inane delays of 90 to 120 days or so for issuing reexamination certifications, simply because the Office wants to have a formal reprinted reexamination patent – when instead the reexamination could be issued as an electronic certificate (without the need for a “NIRC”). The Patent Office has known about this particular delay and added expense for quite some time – certainly dating back to the Dudas Administration – yet such low hanging fruit are not harvested.

Channeling Everett McKinley Dirksen: In the overall scheme of things, delaying a reexamination certificate by 90 to 120 days and the millions of dollars in wasted printing costs for not only reexamination certificates but other electronically-publishable documents may not seem much to an overseer of a $ 2 billion-plus empire. Yet, a million here and a million there and pretty soon we’re talking about real money.

What does the Patent System Cost for Japan? How much waste is there within the Patent Office? It would be useful if detailed figures were released by the Office on its spending and with comparative statistics from the Japan Patent Office which has many efficiencies that we could learn from.

From the IPO DAILY NEWS, July 15, 2010:

CONGRESSIONAL APPROVAL OF $129 MILLION SUPPLEMENTAL USPTO APPROPRIATION REQUESTED BY OBAMA FOR 2010 IS BEST HOPE IN SHORT TERM FOR MORE MONEY TO HIRE PATENT EXAMINERS -- Prompt congressional approval of the $129 million 2010 supplemental appropriation requested by President Obama for the USPTO represents the best hope in the short term for an infusion of cash to hire more patent examiners. Obama made the request on Monday. The proposed supplemental should not be controversial with congressional appropriators because it calls for cancellation of $129 million in unspent appropriations of the U.S. Census Bureau, which would "offset" the extra spending by the USPTO. Failure of Congress to approve the supplemental will result in an equal amount of patent fees being diverted into the general U.S. treasury. IPO has already contacted several legislators in support of the proposal and will be sending a letter to legislators today. The President's 2011 budget calls for additional funding for the USPTO, which IPO also supports, but the 2011 funding bill is not expected to be enacted any time soon.