America’s got plenty of new ideas, but for a life-changing medical device or an alternative-energy technology to make it to market, it needs a patent.  And recently it has been taking the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office up to three years to get patents registered.  David Kappos, the new director at the Patent Office, is trying to change that, as Ed Keefe reports in the Washington Post.

Kappos worked for IBM before taking on the challenge of government service, and he was used to shorter delivery times, and shorter meetings as well.  Keefe relates how Kappos laid out his new ideas for speeding up and incentivizing the work process to the employee union at the patent agency in just a few minutes and then “walked out of the room.” That’s what I’d call empowering employees to make decisions an agency that many feel is “in dire need of modernization and a morale boost.  It has been thirty (30) years since the tallying and review system for patent applications has changed significantly.

Even as he tries to accelerate practices at his agency, Kappos apparently realizes that government will never work as quickly as the private sector.  He notes that “it’s got to move at a speed where the public can have input, and that means checks and balances, and things that move more slowly than in the private sector.” Let’s hope it’s not three — or thirty — years before things start to really move at the USPTO.

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