By Dennis Crouch

The chart above is not an EKG.  Rather, it shows the ebb and flow of USPTO activity — the heartbeat of the 10,000+ patent examiners whose activity follows the bi-weekly quota system. The regular peaks come every two weeks, but the chart shows an overlay of two additional quotas: quarterly quotas (the higher blip every 3 months) and yearly quotas (the messy blip at the end of each fiscal year).  Like their patent attorney counterparts, patent examiners are also deadline driven and their output increases as each deadline approaches.

The next chart focuses in on a single 14 day biweek and the blue line shows data collected from from more than a million non-final and final office actions entered 2022-2024.