New rules governing appeals to the Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences come into effect December 10. Even as some patent prosecutors blast the new rules as vague, costly, and needlessly burdensome, more patent applicants will face themBPAI appeals have grown steadily, according to Patent and Trademark Office figures. The reason: More patent applications are being rejected. Since 2002, allowance rates have dropped precipitously from the traditional level of around 65 percent of applications to the present 44.2 percent. Inventors and their patent prosecutors are in pain. “It’s incredibly frustrating,” says Steven Rubin of WolfBlock. “I deal with a lot of start-up companies, and because the allowance rates are so low, you never know whether they can get patent protection.”

PTO officials deny any institutional crackdown, pointing instead to increasingly poor application quality failing to meet long-established standards. “We would gladly grant 100 percent if they met [the standards],” says commissioner of patents John Doll, who is widely foreseen to become the acting director of the PTO in the early days of the Obama administration after the expected resignation of current director Jon Dudas. “The quality review hasn’t changed. The examination practice hasn’t changed. It must be the applications that have changed.”

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