The USPTO recently announced a new awards competition called Patents for Humanity. The competition is a pilot program meant to encourage the development of technology to meet humanitarian rather than strictly business means. The prize? Accelerated processing of the winners’ patent applications, though the real value is that the winner may use the prize certificate toward any one patent application in his portfolio, not just the prize-winning technology.
This new program is just one of a series of initiatives enacted in response to President Obama’s push to accelerate global development through use of technology. In theory, such initiatives will not only aid developing countries but lead to a stronger and more stable global economy, which will help the United States. The USPTO will assign prizes to up to fifty winners in four different categories: medical technology, food and nutrition, clean technology, and information technology, and has expressed a desire to find solutions to problems such as drought and famine through new technologies. The contest entries will be judged regardless of the field of technology, the location of the targeted population, and the cost of implementing such technology.
This new program is especially intriguing because the White House has rarely used the USPTO to implement policy goals in the past. As a result, investors generally focus on developments in areas with great potential market value rather than those with great humanitarian efforts. While the value of awards certificate is small monetarily, it helps resolve a common complaint among inventors regarding the length of time it takes to process a patent application. With the certificate, winners can ensure a final decision on their applications within a twelve-month period as opposed to the typical two-year process. Since a patentee cannot enforce his patent rights against others until the application is granted, and patent applications are published eighteen months after filing, the accelerated application process could prove a powerful incentive to companies looking to stop infringement of their most potentially valuable products.