Last week Robert Bahr, the Acting Associate Commissioner for Patent Examination Policy at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), said he was “optimistic” that the USPTO would extend the Green Technology Pilot Program if and when it reaches its 3000 application limit.
The statement was part of his keynote address at the Intellectual Property Congress for Green Energy Technology in San Francisco.Â
When the program gets very close to maxing out, the USPTO would likely go back to the patent examiners’ union to seek its approval to extend the program, Bahr said.
It was the examiners’ union concerns that the Green Technology Pilot Program would lead to too much extra work for patent examiners that led the USPTO to impose the 3000 cap when the program launched in late 2009.
The USPTO has extended the program once already, from its original end date of December 8, 2010 to December 31, 2011.
For more information on the USPTO Green Technology Pilot Program see my previous posts here, here and here.
