The FY 2008 Performance and Accountability Report, released Monday, claims that the Office for the first time has met 100% of its Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA) goals.

The GPRA holds US Federal agencies accountable for achieving certain programme results.

Despite the 771,529 unexamined patent applications at the USPTO, the report said that the Office achieved its patent pendency goals, with an average first action pendency of 25.6 months and an average total pendency of 32.2 months, and that 9.4% more applications were disposed of in 2008 than 2007.

The number of pending patent applications, including those under examination, is now 1,208,076.

The Office described its allowance compliance rate of 96.3% as evidence of improved patent quality. However, many practitioners find the PTO's definition of "quality" questionable.

At the AIPLA annual meeting in Washington DC last month, John Love, deputy commissioner for patent examination policy at the USPTO, admitted that patent quality is a "hot topic" and welcomed ideas for objective ways of determining what comprises a quality patent (see the November issue of Managing IP for an article by Marian Underweiser of IBM addressing this issue).

Although the Office is implementing strategies to reduce patent pendency, such as increased hiring, the report said: "Even with continued access to the funding required to successfully execute these strategies, pendency will continue to rise for a period of time, but not to the extent it would have if these actions were not taken."

The Office also met all of its trade mark-related goals, including a first action pendency of three months, an overall disposal rate of 13.9 months and a first action compliance rate of 95.8%.

The report also said that 96.9 % of all trade mark applications were filed electronically in FY 2008.