Top 10 Fastest Allowed Patents

I recently saw an update about the ongoing saga of Gilbert Hyatt’s patents that have been pending for over 35 years. It made me wonder: who is on the flip side of that bell curve? That is, whose patents were pending for a very short amount of time? To get the best measure, I wanted to know which patents were allowed fastest – not which ones paid their issue fees and issued the fastest.

From filing to allowance in 9 days

The overall fasted to allowance for applications filed since 2000 appears to be U.S. Patent 9,724,551, “Stretching Device”, which was filed March 16, 2017 and allowed an amazing 9 days later on March 25, 2017.  The application was not a track 1 application, nor did it have any petition to make special.

The top 10 Fastest allowances (utility applications since 2000)

Here’s the rest of the Top 10 (note I have only included utility applications, not design applications)

Application	Filing Date	Allowance Date	Days	Art Unit	Examiner	Notes
15461254	20170316	20170325	9	3764	LEE, JOSHUA S	Continuation
15644775	20170708	20170718	10	2884	GAWORECKI, MARK R	Made Special (Inventor Age)
15621528	20170613	20170623	10	1774	RASHID, FAZLE A	Continuation
15489295	20170417	20170427	10	1625	MORRIS, PATRICIA L	Divisional
15587635	20170505	20170515	10	3618	JOHNS, HILARY LYNN	Continuation
15608557	20170530	20170609	10	1625	ROZOF, TIMOTHY R	Continuation
15622480	20170614	20170626	12	1726	LEWIS, BEN	Continuation
14665518	20150323	20150404	12	3623	SINGH, GURKANWALJIT	Continuation
15581613	20170428	20170510	12	1625	ROZOF, TIMOTHY R	Divisional
15340080	20161101	20161113	12	2194	MUDRICK, TIMOTHY A	Continuation

Continuations and divisionals get expedited treatment

Note that, only one application in the top 10 was made special (incidentally, apparently a petition to make special based on inventor age can be automatically granted in EFS). The rest were continuations and divisionals. This topic — the expedited treatment of continuations and divisionals — is something that I have been intending to write about and will in the near future.

9 of the Top 10 fastest allowances came in 2017

This accords with the USPTO’s reported statistics of decreasing pendency time — a very good thing.

If you need a patent fast, try to get in front of a Timothy!

Coincidentally, 3 of the top 10 were examined by a Timothy! Turns out Timothy was a very popular name for a long time (source behindthename.com):