http://www.networkworld.com/news/2011/011011-patent-winners-ibm-apple.html
----- The research firm reports that 2010 was a record year for patents. In all, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office issued 219,614 patents which is 31% more patents than were issued in 2009. The tremendous increase in patent issues in 2010 suggests that so far the economy doesnt appear to have slowed patent flow significantly in the U.S., said Darlene Slaughter, general manager of IFI, in a statement. Another important factor is the stepped up effort of the USPTO to improve turnaround times and its five-year strategic plan to increase efficiencies and reduce pendency. The bottom line: There is still a backlog of patents pending, but the number of grants continues to grow even after a period of economic downturn. Follow Ann Bednarz on Twitter: http://twitter.com/annbednarz Read more about infrastructure management in Network World's Infrastructure Management section. ----- regards, alexander. -- http://gng.z505.com/index.htm (GNG is a derecursive recursive derecursion which pwns GNU since it can be infinitely looped as GNGNGNGNG...NGNGNG... and can be said backwards too, whereas GNU cannot.) _______________________________________________ gnu-misc-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/gnu-misc-discuss
