🚀 go-pugleaf

Each week, the Official Gazette of the U.S. Patent Office prints
a report showing the state of the application backlog for each 
examining group.  Note that this list does not show the time from filing 
an application to obtaining a patent.  It shows something else, 
namely the time from filing to the first communication from the 
examiner to the applicant.  That first communication is usually an
"office action", although now and again it will be a "notice of allowance"
indicating that the Patent Office, at that stage, feels the invention
is patentable.
 
I have abridged the descriptions of the examining groups -- the full
description for each group is much lengthier.
 
Backlogs at the U.S. Patent Office, as of March 17, 1992.
 
Examining area                              Group   Oldest
                                            Number  Case
 
Chemical
 
General Metallurgical, Inorganic etc.        110    Dec. 90
Organic Chemistry                            120    May  91
Chemical Engineering                         130    Feb. 91
Plastics                                     150    Aug. 90
Biotechnology                                180    Aug. 90
 
Electrical
 
Physics                                      210    July 90
Special Laws                                 220    July 90
Information Processing                       230    Nov. 89
Packages, Cleaning, Textiles                 240    Jan. 91
Electronic and Optical                       250    Jan. 91
Communications                               260    Aug. 90
Design                                       290    May  89
 
Mechanical
 
Handling and Transportation                  310    Apr. 91
Material Shaping                             320    Mar. 91
Mechanical Technologies                      330    Dec. 90
Solar, Heat, Power                           340    Mar  91
Construction, Petroleum, Mining              350    Jan. 91
 
As you will note, one of the largest backlogs is in the
Information Processing group.  That group gets most of the
software-related patent applications, although Communications
(group 260) also gets some of them.  I attribute this to the
limited number of examiners in group 230, and the policy
balance made by the group in favor of not rushing the
applications through the examination process, even if that
means they grow into a backlog.