US Patent Operations May Shut Down In Second Week of February (bloomberg.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office said it may have to cease patent operations in the second week of February if the partial government shutdown continues, though it has money for trademark work through mid-April. Any furlough of staff could mean significant delays in reviewing the tens of thousands of applications on inventions for things like telecommunications hardware and the next cutting-edge medical treatments. Now it takes on average 15.8 months before a patent applicant can expect a preliminary response from an examiner. More than 640,000 patent applications were filed in fiscal 2018.

The patent office, part of the Commerce Department, is funded entirely by user fees and gets no tax dollars, but it requires an appropriation from Congress to spend the money it collects. In fiscal 2018, it had a budget of $3.3 billion and has asked for $3.5 billion for fiscal 2019. The patent office sets aside authorized money in what's called an operating reserve to account for "temporary changes in our cash flow" and that's what it has been using to stay open since the partial shutdown began Dec. 22. At the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30, it said it had 1.3 months of operating expenses for patent operations and 4.9 months of expenses for trademark operations.

Comments

The end is in sight?

[AmiMoJo]

This might actually break the deadlock on the shutdown. Surely the corporate masters won't allow the patent system to shut down.

Re:The end is in sight?

[Anonymous Coward]

This might actually break the deadlock on the shutdown.

When the social support programs and welfare run dry, that will break the deadlock. Hungry people are desperate people. Most cities and urban centers only have enough food on hand for the next ten meals because of "just-in-time" logistics.

Re:This would be the greatest coup for the America

[Zocalo]

I think Disney has realised that the writing is on the wall for Mickey. Thanks to the Internet, there's now too much public awareness of copyright and activism is much easier compared to when Sonny Bono helped them screw everyone over in 1998. All is not lost for them though, there's already precedent from the works of Arthur Conan Doyle that it's a progressive process - you'll only gain access to each "version" of Mickey or whoever (and other characters, backstory, events, etc.) as that individual version lapses, and how you define a "version" is a matter of debate. Specific details, like the coloured buttons, will be covered and milked for every last cent until they individually lapse.

Besides, despite reports of "Solo" making a loss, I'm pretty sure that the revenue from the Star Wars, Marvel, and Pixar franchises (amongst others) that are under the Disney umbrella is more than enough to make up for any loss in revenue they might have from early versions of classic Disney characters - it's not like they sell much (any?) merchandise based around the "Steamboat Willie" version of Mickey, is it? Unless a miracle happens and we get a reduction in copyright duration, they're going to be under Disney's copyright for many decades before their turn comes to enter the public domain. Trademarks are also valid for as long as you care to enforce them, so expect them to enforce that just as aggresively once the critical copyrights do start to expire.