Webinar: Cutting USPTO Pendency at the Source – Front-End AI for Faster, Stronger Filings
As you have no doubt heard, patent pendency at the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is a problem. As of January, the number of unexamined applications reached a staggering and historic high, with 837,928 applications unexamined and nearly 1.2 million applications pending overall. As of August, the USPTO has been able to reduce the number of unexamined applications to 800,559, which is a great improvement, but much work remains to be done.
USPTO pendency isn’t just a back-end prosecution problem—it starts at the very first touchpoints of the innovation process. Small, AI-assisted changes to invention capture, prior-art triage, and claim strategy can help, and are becoming a necessity as the USPTO continues to implement AI solutions themselves.
Join us on October 7 at 12 PM ET for a conversation about how effective use of AI tools can reduce Office actions, avoid §101/§102/§103/§112 pitfalls, and accelerate filing paths. In this session, we will unpack a practical, front-end playbook that uses AI to raise disclosure quality, ground claims in the right art from day one, and reduce office action churn, which will lead to not only faster patents but patents of greater quality. Moderated by Gene Quinn (IPWatchdog), panelists will be Richard Cahoon (Cornell University), Robert Bahr (former Deputy Commissioner for Patents), Joe Manico (Kodak Alaris), and Jim Durkin (IP.com).
This panel will discuss:
- The pendency problem: what is the USPTO doing to reduce pendency, and is AI a part of that strategy?
- Five front-end moves that cut pendency: from structured ideation and early IDS readiness to self-serve knock-out reports.
- AI in the real workflow: how tools like IQ Ideas+ leverage integrated generative AI to accelerate innovation pipelines.
- Global acceleration strategies: designing for Track One and leveraging PPH with aligned claim sets.
- Governance & security: practical guidance for using AI responsibly at the cross-section of engineering and IP workflows.
