Publications

As we watch the current economic down cycle unfold, we can only wonder how long it will last, and how much of an impact it will have on our nation’s patent system.

Pundits appear ambivalent as to how to characterize the severity of the current down cycle, and even differ on what to call it. As we know, “depression” was the descriptor of choice in 1929. Perhaps less well-known is that a former term of choice was “panic.” By 1929, the “powers that be” feared that calling the down cycle a “panic” might cause the general public to do exactly that, and turned to the slightly more euphemistic word “depression” instead.

In the early stages of the down cycle, we might expect that the Patent Office will experience a relatively small percentage decline in the number of patent filings, resulting in some decrease in revenues attributable to filing fees. To offer some perspective, in 1929 the number of patent application filings in the U.S. hit an all-time high for that era of almost 95,000. Although the decline in the following year was small, by 1933 the number of filings had dropped a whopping 36 percent off the all-time high down to about 60,000.