Unveiled on May 10th, the USPTO now provides a Trademarks Dashboard tool demonstrating a data visualization of many factors concerning trademark processing and how they compare to the past years. This tool gives users access to information including first action and total pendency, first and final action quality, filing methods metrics, as well as total registrations broken down by classes and fiscal year.

The end goal of this tool is to keep the users and the applicants up to date with the efforts at the USPTO, by measuring and providing statistics within the Trademark division. A notable measure of quality is the first action quality statistic, which is “measured through an evaluation of all issues involved in making a first action substantive decision on the registrability of a mark. The target is 95.5% for the percentage of error free decisions.”

The Q1 of 2011 showed a marked improvement over 2010 with a 97.3% quality score, while the registrations in Q2 are lower at 96.4%. So far this fiscal year189,064 applications have been filed, a vast majority of which have been filed electronically. Almost halfway through the year, there have been 228,000 new registrations – already topping last year’s figure at this point (221,090), approaching 2009’s figure (241,637), and almost matching the 2008’s number of 274,250.

This data visualization tool is very similar to the USPTO’s patent dashboard, and is welcomed by all of us in the intellectual property field. It is welcoming to see these tools that are meant to provide transparency into the backlogged offices, and offer very informative and up to date data for users.

Take a look at the Trademarks Dashboard