The following table looks at the number of years-in-prosecution for utility patents issued on April 27, 2010. I divided the issued patents into four groups depending whether the patent claims priority to either a foreign application or a US non-provisional. The table reports the average pendency for each group as well as the relative number of patents in the group.
I used the same patent application pendency data to create the cumulative frequency chart below. As can be seen, the median pendency is a bit under four years. 90% of patents issue within six years.
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Average Pendency of Utility Patents Issued April 27, 2010 (Filing Date to Issue Date, Not Including Priority Claims) |
Claim Priority to Foreign Application |
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Yes |
No |
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|
Claim Priority to US Non-Provisional Application |
Yes |
2.8 years (6% of Patents) |
3.2 years (15% of Patents) |
|
No |
4.1 years (33% of Patents) |
4.1 years (45% of Patents) |
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I used the same patent application pendency data to create the cumulative frequency chart below. As can be seen, the median pendency is a bit under four years. 90% of patents issue within six years.
