The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office is moving very slowly in granting patents at a time that intellectual property is viewed as a critical part of the economic viability of the United States. While there are not official statistics, the number of patent applications waiting for an initial determination by the United States Patent Office will total more than 1 million in 2006. This is the first time this number of applications has been in this state. According to Ronald Edgerton, chief executive officer of SigMatel Inc., a semiconductor company in Austin, Texas, this represents a very great problem. In the high-tech industry, an invention may have a life span of only two or three years before technology moves on. If patents are not issued until the value of the technology they represent begins to decrease, the entire process has failed. While the number of patent applications has increased each year for 20 years, the number of patent examiners has not. The volume of applications is about to overwhelm the patent examination corps and will degrade the quality of their work. It is also creating an enormous backlog of pending patent cases. In 1993, the period of time between when an inventor applied for a patent and the day on which an examiner made a preliminary decision averaged 7.6 months. In 2005, this period was 20.2 months. In some areas, like telecommunications, it could take more than 30 months between filing the application and getting a preliminary determination.