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.

Comments

Open Source People : Apply!

[Jeppe Salvesen]

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!

Cheap, eh?

[dbolger]

Good - and with the downturn in the high tech industry you can get them cheap.
Ummmm, are you talking about the patents, the gadgets....or the examiners? ;)

Re:Cheap, eh?

[mikeage]

Good - and with the downturn in the high tech industry you can get them cheap.
Ummmm, are you talking about the patents, the gadgets....or the examiners? ;)

Yes.

That's all fine and good, but...

[wonder]

call me a cynic if you will, but hiring more people to do a job doesn't necessarily mean they'll do it well. Sure, they're engineers with experience and we all might assume that they'll have a bit more insight into what should and shouldn't be legitimate claims. However, they're still going to be under someone who's giving out the directions on how things are supposed to be done, and that someone is probably well entrenched in the thinking that's become the object of many a laugh on these message boards. Strange how independent thought tends to wither and dry up after enough time has passed in almost any job. Here's hoping..

Re:That's all fine and good, but...

[Man of E]

Agreed for the most part, but a larger problem with the patent office that goes hand in hand with "entrenched thinking" is the patent office's legendary bureaucracy. If one of these clerks thinks a claim might not be legitimate, how many hoops will they have to jump through to get their point across to all the entrenched thinkers involved, and how much paperwork will it take!
I'm sure the new hires will start out wanting to do the job well, but after filling out forms in triplicate for a few proposals to kill a illegitimate claims for reasons only engineers would understand, they'll end up as entrenched as everyone else. A waste of good talent.

Re:That's all fine and good, but...

[hamburger lady]

actually, its pretty damn easy to reject a claim, even if your evidence isn't that great.

what can be hard is allowing an application. actually, this is what examiners want, because it lets them work on other applications, and you only get credit for the first (i.e. first rejection) and last (issue) actions. all the piddly arguing with the attorney is a waste of time that could be better used on another application. also, allowances are hella easy, it only takes about 15 minutes to whip one up.

Hiring People to Assess Patents

[Renraku]

Hopefully the people they're hiring have many years of experience in analyzing patents and inventions. Hopefully they're all intelligent, unbiased and unassuming. We all know this isn't going to be so..We can only hope someone doesn't do something like give (insert large software/hardware company here) a patent on some key patent that will allow them to sue everyone that owns a computer and uses the internet. Hey, it could happen, but we must hope that they're hiring the best...or it just might.

Why only EEs?

[c_jonescc]

The article states that comp. engs. and EEs are the ones being hired, but most scientists with higher degrees should be able to do this job. Physicists usually arn't considered for engineering jobs, both in govt and industry, and I have never understood why.

Re:Why only EEs?

[Edgewize]

They probably don't take physicists because physics majors tend to be too theoretical in everything. "Oops, I admitted a patent on the letter E? Must have been an experimental error."

Re:Why only EEs?

[SirSlud]

I think Engineers generally have a broader base of understanding of the impacts of technology and a generally more holistic view on the science/tech map. In a patent examiner, you'd hope they would be considering patents in the broader scope of technology.

My father is a physisist with a PHD and works as the prinicipal research scientist of a mass spectrometry company; while he holds several patents, I highly doubt he has the wide picture needed for assessing the validity of patents.

Also, engineers, and I'm just guessing here, are more used to dealing with reports in the vain of patent applications; with schematics, circuit diagrams, etc. I dunno, I think it just has to do with the broader knowledge base engineers are required to possesses, in light of the fact that they are the last layer of higher education before a product hits the market. R&D tell you what can be done; engineers do it.

Lets also not forget that they are doing this to deal with the new influx of technology related patents, as the western world increasingly becomes patent happy. In this respect, I'd bet that much of this influx relates to inventions stemming directly from the comp/ee world.

Re:Why only EEs?

[c_jonescc]

I do not think that an engineering education is at all more broad than a physicists. True, with a bachelors degree an engineer is probably more prepared to build something distributable, but engineering degrees are inherently specific. You only learn optics, or mechanics, or electronics, whilst a good physics program should cover all those areas with depth. I just don't think an engineer can cover as much as a physics Ph.D. But then I am working on my physics Ph.D. so I might be somewhat biased.

But during my undergrad days I interned for Lockheed Martin and they just didn't know what to do with a physics major. All the engineering majors had placements, but since I wasn't optical or mechanical or chemical or electrical, they didn't know what I could do, while I honestly think I could have been productive in any of the groups. I may not have memorized the "right" formulas for calculation at that point, but I did have a deeper understanding of the fundamentals, and from there the calculations are a small step away.

Seems that the label before the word engineer is what HR usually looks at.

Re:Why only EEs?

[markmoss]

a) EE Times is naturally going to concentrate on the EE jobs, but it's not only EE's. Go to uspto.gov and look at the job listings.

b) I think engineers would generally make better patent examiners (in their particular field) than physicists because engineers have a better grasp of the existing practice. When it comes to the worst patents the hard part evidently isn't understanding the application or searching the patent database, it is recognizing when the patent claims to cover an idea that is never-patented but already in use (and therefore public domain). E.g., to check out an application concerning communications between computers, familiarity with the rarefied mathematics of communications theory is less useful than the ability to recognize an attempt to patent the IP protocol...

(Maybe I'm biased. I switched from physics to EE. But I remember one physics prof who might not have realized that a patent application for a "circular transportation facilitation device" had prior art called the "wheel". No decent engineer would ever make that mistake.)

Familiarity with "hard" science fiction might help too. /. once brought up a patent which claimed to cover the very idea of PDA's -- it's not going to hold up, because Arthur C. Clarke described a PDA in Imperial Earth, written in the 70's.

What I do worry about though, is:

1. Will they get good engineers with working knowledge in their fields, or just people with EE degrees? Starting pay of $50K isn't much for a good engineer, especially if the work is non-creative, involves excessive paperwork, and is located in the only city run by a congressional committee...

2. How will their engineers stay current in their fields when they aren't actually designing anything?

3. The bureaucratic motivations are still all wrong. Reject an application and the applicant can, and often will, sue the bureau. Rubberstamp the application, and there may be worse lawsuits, but the bureau isn't involved. Now, if the bureau got to pay the legal fees & court costs whenever a patent was successfully challenged...

Will this help with software patent issues?

[Hiro Antagonist]

I think this is definitely a good thing, but an electrical engineer is not qualified to examine a software patent; EEs and CEs deal mostly with hardware and software written in extremely low-level languages (such as assembly or raw machine code). It seems to me that the USPO desperately needs programmers (CS people) to look at the flood of incoming software patents to prevent cascades of lawsuits like the ones following the dot-com bust; e.g., where a company patents an already well-known or incredibly vague algorithm, and then files suit against everybody from Bob Dobbs to the Care Bears for patent violation.

Re:Will this help with software patent issues?

[aozilla]

It seems to me that the USPO desperately needs programmers (CS people) to look at the flood of incoming software patents to prevent cascades of lawsuits like the ones following the dot-com bust

They sure don't know that. Not only are they not actively hiring CS majors as patent agents, you can't even become a patent agent with a degree from most CS programs. Yep, spent four years at Rutgers, graduated at the top of my class, and I'm not even qualified to reject patent applications. OK, OK, Rutgers is a shitty school, but still...

Government getting better techies

[dlek]

In terms of techspertise (I think I just made that up!) the economic downturn is good for government. The Canadian gov't is licking their chops cos with the recession they can finally afford some good tech people.

And sometimes, what's good for government is good for us all. This economic dry patch might be good for the industry in the long term, starting with a beefed-up US patent office.

dlek

Gadgets not software

[M_Talon]

If you read the article, you'll see this only applies to telecommunications and electronic devices. No mention made about software or Internet technology. So no worries, folks, I'm sure we'll still have plenty of silly "one-click" patents to talk about here on /.

Re:Gadgets not software

[wiredog]

Like this one?

Re:Gadgets not software

[Tackhead]

> If you read the article, you'll see this only applies to telecommunications and electronic devices. No mention made about software or Internet technology. So no worries, folks, I'm sure we'll still have plenty of silly "one-click" patents to talk about here on /.

USPTO: Look, we need 500 new engineers for the USPTO, and we need 'em now.

Grunt:Why?

USPTO:Because we have so many frivolous patent applications coming in for crap like clicking on web sites and ways to keep cats amused that our current examiners can barely keep up with the load. You got any idea how tired a guy's arm gets slamming down that damn rubber stamp for eight hours a day, five days a week, 52 weeks a year?

Grunt:Ah, I get it. You want a different process for the types of companies that might have actual innovations, but what you really want to do is make sure idiot dot-coms with obvious applications of prior art also have a fair shake at approval!

USPTO:For great justice, approve every patent!

they've been hiring for a while now

[hamburger lady]

when i joined the PTO 3 years ago, the boss-man was all 'yeah, we need a lot of people now'. he's been saying that every month since.

the job is not at all difficult. but don't think you can change the system somehow, i spend most of my time trying to untangle myself from the beaurocracy that is the patent office.

pays well tho.

Re:they've been hiring for a while now

[John Miles]

the job is not at all difficult

Yes, I suppose it's quite relaxing, as long as you don't get your finger caught in the 220-volt rubber-stamping machine that you guys must have down in the basement.

dunno about you, but. . .

[waxmop]

i'm putting together my rez right this minute - goodbye dreary finance meetings and hello checking 'adult pleasure devices' for prior art!

They need to change the revenue model.

[IGnatius T Foobar]

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.

Re:They need to change the revenue model.

[robbway]

They get their money from the application process. So the incentive is get through as many patents as possible. There is a quota system that supports this policy.

Re:They need to change the revenue model.

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh what are you talking about? I work at the PTO and really don't understand your comment. Our money comes from applications and renewals, not from when a patent is approved.

If there is a problem at the PTO it is too few examiners and a production quota system that values speed over quality.

Re:They need to change the revenue model.

[hamburger lady]

man, that is one of the dumbest things i've ever heard.

we make money from everything, from the filing to the issue. in fact, i've made the PTO more money in fees from NOT allowing cases, since the attorney has to pay evertime he amends the application.

the real problem is people who don't know what the hell they're talking about.

Re:They need to change the revenue model.

[Nicolas MONNET]

Sorry, the OP is still right.

If the USPTO (and, in the same way, the EPO) was stricter on patent applications, and rejected all the bogus shit we see derided here on slashdot, ....

... the con artists would stop submitting those bogus patents.

And ... the patent office would indeed make less money.

Re:They need to change the revenue model.

[benedict]

Not to mention, the PTO can't collect renewal fees on patents they don't grant.

Re:They need to change the revenue model.

[dattaway]

Our money comes from applications and renewals

If I understand this motivation, investing in an approval now yields future returns in renewals

Re:They need to change the revenue model.

[mpe]

Albert Einstein worked for the Swiss Patent Office because only took him an hour or two a day to do his job.

It probably helped that he was suitibly skeptical of the applications he saw.
Whereas is modern counterpart appears to almost take the view "I don't undrstand it so it must be an innovation"...

Circuit patents == software patents?

[re-geeked]

Here are questions that jump in to my mind on reading this:

Is there a problem with patenting of electronic circuit designs that's similar to the familiar problems of patenting algorithms, processes, and genetic materials?

Namely, are there too many patents for devices that don't have proven, unique, new, and specific utility, and that don't necessarily require inventive insight?

Are we giving "same as the last design, just add this component" electrical device patents?

Is this how IBM, Motorola, and Intel compile such impressive numbers of patents granted?

It certainly seems like this could be the case. Seriously, I'm curious about info/opinions on this.

Re:Circuit patents == software patents?

[sheldon]

Yes, that's how it works.

Re:Circuit patents == software patents?

[markmoss]

Are we giving "same as the last design, just add this component" electrical device patents? I think they are, and what's wrong with that? Most patents simply protect one particular device from near-exact copying, and don't try to cover all ways of doing the same thing. Such patents protect step-by-step improvements on old designs, without hindering anyone who designs a different competitive product. Narrow patents like these meet the reason for patents expressed in the Constitution: "To promote the progress of science and the useful arts".

Patents become counter-productive (block progress) when they are too broad and claim to cover all ways of accomplishing something. This can only occur if either someone is remarkably innovative, or if they are claiming more than they actually originated. I suspect it is almost always the latter case, because when "great inventions" are placed in their historical context, nearly always the inventor was either pulling together existing ideas (Edison, the Wright Brothers), or was unable to make his idea work well enough in practice and had to leave it to a later generation with better materials (Da Vinci, Babbage).

The problem is, when it comes to software and high-tech "business methods", the patent office is often so confused as to grant ridiculously overbroad patents. Sometimes it allows very wide-ranging claims on an idea that is at best a slight improvement upon existing practice -- because the existing practice was never thought patentable, so searching their database doesn't turn it up, and the examiners are insufficiently familiar with the ideas that are in the public domain. An extreme example of this is the recently granted Aussie patent for the wheel; since patent databases don't stretch back to 5,000BC you aren't going to find the prior art there, but you think someone _should_ have noticed. Or in many cases, there is some small idea that may actually be innovative, but the patent claims far more than that -- analogous to claiming to have invented the wheel when actually you just invented a better kind of cotter pin to hold the wheel on the axle... You'll get clobbered if you go to trial against anyone who isn't using your new cotter pin, but often they'll pay modest royalties instead of bearing the expense of going to trial.

The most damaging patents of all are extremely broad ones filed by people who never created a successful product, but who simply guessed which way technology was headed, filed a vague patent application, and kept amending it for many years. About 1960 someone filed a patent on a block of silicon containing six transistors, interconnected by soldered wires; a long series of amendments and legal arguments kept this from being either issued or rejected until the 1980's, when it finally issued as a patent on integrated circuits! An IC of the period (say an 80286 CPU) resembled the original device like an aircraft carrier resembles a dugout canoe. The "inventor" hadn't done the 20-some years of work that advanced IC manufacture from six disconnected transistors to about a million connected transistors, but he wanted to cash in on it.

Re:Circuit patents == software patents?

[re-geeked]

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.

New Hires vs. Policy

[HiThere]

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...

Re:New Hires vs. Policy

[jmauro]

The patent's office funding doesn't come from granting as many patents as possible, but other orginizations who are more politically backed funding comes from the patent office granting more patents. The sad part of it is that even if the patent office gets more income from the patenting process they can't hire more people or make other decisions based on that process because Congress takes away all of their surplus if they are over the budgetted amount. It's an aweful cycle that no one seems to be able to break.

The real question, however...

[PhReaKyDMoNKeY]

...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.

Damn the evil corporations!

Re:The real question, however...

[spectecjr]

...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

Great!

[susano_otter]

Now maybe they'll have time to approve my patent for "a solar-powered perpetual motion machine in an open entropic system". Once that's done, I can get busy collecting royalties on all those solar-powered cars, calculators, and roadside assistance phones!

Re:Great!

[the_2nd_coming]

a solar-powered perpetual motion machine in an open entropic system

a perpetual motion machine would be powered under the energy that is released by the out put of the system....I.E. you start the car, and all the revolutions of the tires after that initial start would be powered by the energy given off by the car moving. a solar powerd machine is anything but perpetual, it still falls under the laws of thermodynamics.

Re:Great!

[the_2nd_coming]

God I hate Semantics

500 patent examiners...

[Dutchmaan]

So what does that equate to in the proportional number of corporate lawyers...???

Something like this could result in a lawyer singularity!!!

Not even rational thinking can escape a lawyer singularity!!!

(+5, Insightful) [mod up parent]

[ijx]

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...

Yeah, but when are they going to hire SW engineers

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder whether the anti-patent crowd here on /. and elsewhere would be happier if the PTO had a cadre of software engineers who specifically vetted software patents. Perhaps if the one-clicks and other "obvious" ideas never made it through in the first place, there wouldn't be so much to complain about. Where were the complaints against software patents prior to the rise of the Open Source trend?

Speeding up the Output

[KarmaBlackballed]

500 more examiners just means we will see more patents coming out of the mill, not better ones.

The problem we face is not that we do not have enough examiner staff to properly consider submissions. Rather, the fundamental problem is that we give monopoly rights to software at all.

Money drowns out common sense any day.

Re:as cheap as ever

[selan]

Actually, the feds have a special pay scale for IT workers that is much closer to typical tech salaries.

You can check it out at http://www.opm.gov/oca/01tables/SSR/index.htm.

Two possibilities it seems...

[Kasreyn]

If they're hiring more because "Oh no, we're catching a ton of flak over these recent patents, we need to make sure bad patents don't get through", then that's great. That's good.

But if it's, "Dangit, we don't have enough people to rubberstamp corporate patents FAST enough! GWB needs us to Do Our Part for the economy by letting every patent through, find more rubberstamps!", then it'll only make things worse.

-Kasreyn

EE's are not cheap.

[Zordak]

>> and with the downturn in the high tech industry you can get them cheap.

You moron. EE's are not now and never have been cheap. The dot-com bust and downturn of computer sales have not left them wandering the streets with hopes of getting any job they can find. That's what happened to the hordes of IS geeks who thought they could make good money fast without actually learning a useful skill. EE's spend gruelling years in college earning their degrees because they know that once they get out, they are entering a market where they are constantly in demand. It's great that the USPTO is hiring some EE's, but that doesn't mean they're going to get them at minimum wage.

Re:I actually start at the USPTO in January

[geekoid]

No offense, but I would rather see someone with actual experience. You'll agree with me in about 5 years.

Re:Huh?

[Zordak]

Simple does not mean blatantly obvious. Usually, finding the simple solution is a much more challenging task than coming up with a complicated one.

Better Late Than Never

[4of12]

mmbrflglkmm...barn doors...horse.