By Donald Zuhn –

In a press release issued last week, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office announced that for the first time in nearly a decade, the number of first Office actions that the USPTO has issued during the fiscal year is exceeding the number of new applications that are being filed.  The Office noted that as of April 6, the number of unexamined U.S. patent applications had dropped to 776,995 – the lowest level in two years – which is down from a high of 837,928 unexamined applications in January of 2025.  The Office also noted that in view of historical trends, the inventory of unexamined applications is expected to further decline through the third and fourth fiscal year quarters.  The Office stated that the reduction in unexamined patent applications has been achieved while also exceeding all fiscal year patent quality compliance targets.

Significantly, the Office noted that it is close to achieving its “aggressive fiscal year goal of virtually eliminating its inventory of unexamined applications that would otherwise exceed 36 months.”  USPTO Director John A. Squires pointed out that “[h]itting this subtle but important increment early bodes well because we are intent on slashing application examination wait time,” adding that “reduced wait time means money – our studies show even a one-week reduction in pendency increases a U.S. company’s value by approximately $35,000 on average.”  As for the reasons for the reduction, Director Squires stated that the Office has been “steadily releasing robust AI tools to assist our examiners, and we’re about halfway to our aggressive goal for new examiner hires.”

With respect to the “robust AI tools” mentioned by the Director, the USPTO announced last month that it was waiving the petition fee for the Artificial Intelligence Search Automated Pilot (ASAP!) program.  The Office noted that the petition fee set forth in 37 C.F.R. § 1.17(f) for petitions filed under 37 C.F.R. § 1.182 was being waived in order to alleviate any financial barriers to participation in the ASAP! program.  The Office also announced that it was increasing the number of applications to be accepted into the program to at least 3,200 applications (and at least 400 applications per Technology Center).  ASAP! program petitions will be accepted until the earlier of Monday, April 20, 2026, or the date that a Technology Center has docketed at least 400 applications accepted into the program.

The ASAP! program, which was announced last fall, is intended to test the efficiency of the USPTO’s internal AI tool for conducting pre-examination prior art searches.  In October, when the program was first announced, Director Squires noted that the ASAP! program “is the first of many planned AI pilots designed to help examiners and applicants alike ensure their patents are born strong.”  The program provides Applicants with an initial communication – an AI-Assisted Search Results Notice (ASRN) – identifying a list of potential prior art issues in need of attention, affording Applicants with an early opportunity to assess their claims against the prior art before substantive examination begins.  Automated searches are conducted using an internal AI system that derives contextual information from the classification of the application under the Cooperative Patent Classification (CPC) system, as well as from the specification, claims, and abstract of the application.  The ASAP! program will help the Office assess outcomes for pre-examination searches, evaluate the scalability of generating the ASRN, and collect data to inform next steps and companion pilots.  Additional information regarding the ASAP! program was provided in a Federal Register notice (90 Fed. Reg. 48161) issued last fall.

One AI “tool” that the USPTO will not be relying on to help reduce the unexamined application backlog, however, is the “first-of-its-kind” agentic AI tool, MATTHEW (McConaughey Agentic Tasking Technology Helping Examiner Workload), that the Office highlighted in a press release issued on April 1 (hint, hint).  The Office’s “explanation” can be found here.