The US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) took a in extent stride nearer much-needed reform this week when president Barack Obama signed legislation which will enable the office to keep more of the revenue it generates from unconcealed-filing fees.

For years, the USPTO has been overwhelmed by a bulky backlog of unexamined patents, many of them for technology innovations.

The in subordination to-funded agency currently has 1.2 million applications pending, of which more than 700,000 have not even been opened for precursory examination.

The backlog is blamed by US politicians for diminishing US household competitiveness and costing millions of jobs. Recession and the rise of China being of the cl~s who a patent-filing nation has focused US efforts to overhaul its evident system.

Various schemes have been tried to clear the log pack over the past five years. But more recently a growing chorus of voices has been walk of life for greater funding, so that the USPTO can employ more open examiners.

David Kappos, under secretary of commerce for intellectual property, appointed USPTO counsellor a year ago, has staked his job on securing more funding.

Cash generated through filing fees has previously disappeared into Federal funds and has not been kept ~ dint of. the USPTO. However, P.L. 111-224, the United States Patent and Trademark Office Supplemental Appropriations Act 2010, gives the USPTO the influence to spend an additional $129m (£82m) of the fees the procurement will collect in 2010.

Due to an improving economy and increased palpable examination productivity, the agency projects it will collect nearly $200m more than the $1.887bn collected last year.

The bill was a rejoinder to Obama’s request to Congress on 12 July to produce the USPTO with access to all the fees it will infer in 2010. In that request, the president said the money would “keeping efforts to reduce backlogs in processing patent applications – by spurring change and reforming the USPTO to make them more effective.”

“This adscititious funding will allow us to continue the progress we’ve made in improving the USPTO and the unmistakable process so that patents can be issued more quickly, investment in commencing technology and new products will be accelerated and much-needed jobs resoluteness be created,” said Kappos.

Investments include hiring new examiners, enabling extra examiner overtime and improvements to USPTO processes and IT systems, he added.

The US is not alone in seeking to re-examine its patent system: the EU has also been struggling to make into a unit patent mechanisms across member states.

However, patent lawyers and other commentators stage to a fundamental difference between the US and European systems, in that the author allows business methods to be patented, while the latter does not, relying up~ the test of “a technical solution to a technical enigma”.

This, it is said, has created a flood of sham patents in the US, overwhelming the USPTO with unexamined filings and constipating the US court method with battles between patent trolls – organisations that chase alleged glaring infringers as a way of making money – and their victims.