The USPTO recently announced its new Ombudsman Pilot Program. The Ombudsman Pilot Program is designed to enhance the experience applicants and their representatives have in dealing with issues that arise during patent application prosecution.  To do so, the USPTO is providing personnel to help applicants identify, understand and overcome organizational roadblocks and act as an intermediary between the USPTO and applicants when problems arise.  In the context of this Pilot Program, the “Ombudsman” is meant to ensure that an applicant, attorney, or agent gets the assistance they need when the normal channels have not yielded that assistance.  More specifically, when there is a breakdown in the normal prosecution process, the Ombudsman Pilot Program is designed to provide a method for getting the process back on track quickly.

The Ombudsman Pilot Program does not supplant normal communication between applicants and the USPTO examiner assigned to the case. For example, when an applicant has a question about a specific application in prosecution and is unable to find the correct person to assist them or they are unable to obtain assistance from the examiner to whom the application is assigned, then the Ombudsman Pilot Program is the venue to use. 

In addition to resolving problems, the Ombudsman program will accept confidential complaints for issues which arise during prosecution and attempt to track their occurrence rate over time.  The Ombudsman Program Director will periodically review reports of the confidential complaints looking for trends or groups of complaints regarding the same or similar issues and will take action based on the trend or group of complaints without revealing the particulars of any individual complaints. 

To view the USPTO’s FAQs on the Ombudsman Pilot Program, click here.