U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) Director Kathi Vidal published a Director’s blog post today addressing the Office’s current backlog of patent and trademark applications, which the latest USPTO data shows to be 785,387 unexamined applications/ 25.6 months total pendency for patents and 14.5 months total pendency for trademarks. Vidal said in her blog post that “unpredictable macro effects, including a pandemic that had an outsized impact on our application inventories, have created an ‘inherited backlog’ of both patent and trademark applications.”
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