USPTO drops the SAWS program ?

Yahoo News reported on March 3:

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In a post on the USPTO’s website, the organization acknowledged that the program in question, named the Sensitive Application Warning System (SAWS), was outdated and unhelpful.

“Upon careful consideration, the USPTO has concluded that the SAWS program has only been marginally utilized and provides minimal benefit,” the post, which was published Monday night, reads. 

Part of the “minimal benefit” provided was a secretive and lengthy bureaucratic review process imposed upon independent inventors over the years, some of whom have filed legal action against the government organization for doing so.

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Though SAWS was only applied to a few cases, its impact when applied was large:

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Though only about .04 percent of all patent applications are thrown into SAWS purgatory, those that do take twice the average time to be approved and are also twice as likely to be rejected, according toinformation obtained via Freedom of Information Act requests made by the law firm Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton LLP.
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