Count Reform, the Obama Transition Team’s Plan to Curtail RCE’s: Coming into Office, leadership of the current Administration was aware of the need to cut down on continuing and RCE practice and faulted the previous administration for its failure to use count reform to reach this goal. As recognized by the Obama Transition Team member who had been embedded in the PTO after the election, the previous Administration proposed the notorious Tafas rules “[i]n lieu of a complex renegotiation of the incentive scheme for examiners that would have been constrained by a limited budget….” Arti K. Rai, Growing Pains in the Administrative State: The Patent Office's Troubled Quest for Managerial Control, 157 U. Pa. L. Rev. 2051, 2070 (2009).

“RCE Filings: The Facts”: This titled piece was posted on “David Kappos' Public Blog”, July 26, 2010, in an unusual “guest” post by the Commissioner for Patents: “[O]verall average RCE filing rates have not changed significantly ….[H[ere are the latest figures: in FY 10, 114,183 RCE applications have been filed through July 12, 2010. This represents 31.2 % of total … filings. When compared with 110,183 filings over the same period in FY09 and 138,459 filings for all of FY09, it is apparent that the average RCE filing rate has remained fairly constant. ***

“[T]here continue to be many reasons why applicants file RCEs. As such, we will continue to treat RCEs as a valuable tool in the patent prosecution process. ***

“Overall, our RCE inventory has gone from 17,209 as of July 1, 2009, to 35,569 as of July 1, 2010.”

Even before the current Administration took office, the then-ongoing Tafas controversy over RCE abuse had attracted the attention of the Obama Transition Team as acknowledged by Arti K. Rai, the member of the team embedded in the Office during the transition period.

Failure Acknowledged, RCE's up 3+ % over PPM Projection: The “Director’s Blog” in a starkly titled post, “RCE Filings: The Facts”, has frankly acknowledged the failure of “count reform” to cut down on RCE filings:

28 % Projection for FY2010: As last visited on July 27, 2010, the PTO’s Patent Pendency Model projects a very slight decrease in RCE’s for FY2010 to 28 % of total filings. (The PPM projects total RCE filings for FY2010 at 127,789.)

Correction, “The Facts”, 31+ % RCE’s: On Monday, the Director’s Blog (as excerpted below) confirms that RCE’s today represent over 31 % of total filings.