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US Patent Office To Hire 500 New Examiners
ddillman writes to us with a story from EEtimes that is reporting that the US Government, specifically the PTO, is hiring up to 500 electrical engineers to help assess the validity of new patent claims on technical gadgets. Good - and with the downturn in the high tech industry you can get them cheap.
This is a good chance to inject some open source talent into an important public body. It really sounds like they could use some talent, and most importantly a broader knowledge base!
Stop the brainwash
The real problem with the PTO is that they make money when a patent is awarded. Therefore they are motivated to award as many patents as possible. This needs to change before the "patent everything" mindset will stop getting its way every time.
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New hires don't set policy. The policy appears to be to grant as many patents as feasible. So more new hires will just let them grant more patents quickly.
I may misunderstand this, but my understanding is that the funding for the patent office is somewhat dependant on the number of patents granted. Possibly that was the performance evaluation of the patent examiner. I'm sure that many of the people there try to do the best job feasible under the circumstances. But with those circumstances...
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
What a wonderfully simple and powerful concept...
It reminds me of something Joel Spolsky wrote, about how Microsoft programmers get paid per line of code written, not by the quality of the code. Furthermore, they get paid more for every bugfix. This means that their personal 'revenue models' encourage flawed code.
Just something to chew on...
...is whether or not they'll help keep down the level of bullshit patents (defensive patents or whatever you call them) so certain companies *cough*adobe*cough*macromedia*cough*microsoft* won't be able to sue willy-nilly anymore. Well, I'm sure they'll find a way to do that anyway, but it might slow them down a bit.
Name ONE case where Microsoft has used their patents aggressively, rather than to defend themselves from lawsuits against others.
Just ONE. That's all I ask.
Simon
Coming soon - pyrogyra
While I agree wholeheartedly with your feelings on overbroad patents, to answer your question: what's wrong with old-patent-plus-one-bit patents? I'd say that they are evidence of the fact that our patent system has become an expensive, elaborate joke.
If a company has enough resources and enough of a stake in an area of technology, they can pepper the patent office with enough variations and guesses and might-work-somedays to leave others with the choices of: do the same, stay out of the field, or take your chances.
Sometimes, they'll take a shot at a big home run, which gives the overbroad patent, and sometimes they'll look at someone else's home run attempt and find a little room for improvement. The fact is that neither patent is worth as much to the public as the applicant hopes to get out of it.
I agree that your IC patent example is silly, and is a counterincentive to those who would put capital behind technology development. Isn't a patent that adds that millionth transistor just as silly, and a counterincentive to someone who would like to establish a new venture in the field?
Anyone still reading wants to know what the answer is, and I'm not sure, but I think the only way out is for the PTO to treat a patent grant as a damn special thing that occurs to the rare, deserving breakthrough. Maybe there should be a limited number of patent grants?
The PTO also needs to avoid punishing those who don't apply for patents (boy I bet that farmer from Ur is rolling in his grave over the wheel patent!), since that seems to just encourage the defensive-patent peppering.
As it stands, I'm having a hard time seeing how patents really serve to protect inventors or reward capitalists much.
"You can't get something for nothing." - my grandfather, on the stock market and Reaganomics.