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Scientific American On Bad Patents
dltallan writes: "Scientific American has a short article in which Gregory Aharonian presents his picks for the four worst patents granted. I like the patent for training with manuals (1998)." The Bustpatents site is worth spending some eye-rubbing time on.
- Documented Research and Development
- Resource Usage on R&D documented
- Professional Acceptance of Patent (Maybe a part of the USPO acts as a mentor program(?)
- Possible Prior Art and Explanations why it is not (I really like this one)
- Penalties for Obvious Patents
- Business Models and complex sociological functions unpatentable
- Physical patents require working model
- Web related patents with comparable real-life applications unpatentable (Amazon One-click)
And the list goes on and on"Anybody who tells me I can't use a program because it's not open source, go suck on rms. I'm not interested." (LT 2004)
Part of the problem with the patent office is that technically minded people don't want to work there. Sure you get to learn about lots of creative ideas and there is good deal of job security, but who really wants to work for the patent office? As far as I know there has only ever been one really famous patent clerk, and he left shortly after that paper was published.
People with technical skills and training to solve problems aren't interested in a job that is largely research and paperwork. Who can blame them? At the University of Maryland (just outside DC), some people from the patent office came to give a well publicized lecture about their trade and next to no one showed up to hear it. The most knowledgable people will go off and invent or even just teach and then people who can't find positions elsewhere end up working for the USPTO. [I'm sure there are some bright patent examiners, but they sure aren't likely to attract many.]
One might try using pay and perks to make the job more attractive, but that's only likely to go so far. It occurs to me that we might do much better if there was a system resembling that of peer review for scientific research. A lot of problems might be solved if patent applications were reviewed by a pool of people that had recieved patents in related fields. Just add a priviso that people that recieve a patent are obligated to review 3-5 patent applications per year for the length of the patent. Remove all the identifying details and send each application out to several people to referee.
Of course there are lots of details to work out, but IMHO such a system could go a long way towards improving the current state of affairs with the granting of patents.
Check these patents:
Silly patents
Really silly patents
Really Very silly patent
Plain absurd patent
Even law firms admit many patents are silly
Are you getting bored of all this silliness yet?
I can go on
And on
And on. Even in Spanish
Incidentlly, I have just made my own patent application:
Method of recieving Karma Points from www.slashdot.org utilising process of relying entirely on external sources and/or hyperlinks - "Karma Whoring".
The US patent office can only search things in the library of congress or their library (i.e. stuff that is patent pending or has been patented (they discard the stuff they reject)). They can't do a google search for prior art since that would leak info to google.
Because most of the inventors of the cool computer stuff didn't think their work was patentable, they didn't submit it and now if you can find something that hasn't been sbumitted, you too can get a patent on something you didn't invent.
The same is true for business practices which can now be patented. With no "prior art", anything can get a patent.
One easy fix to this would be to do something as patent a method to something uesless (but patentable) and submit all of google's database. the problem with this approach is that it requires the entire database.
This is from an ex-GS-1224 (Patent Examiner)
The issue of quantity vs. quality has been a long standing issue in the PTO; it was a raging issue back when I joined in 1973. In the "olden days" (say up until the 1960's, according to the then lore) an examiner could make multiple rejections against an insistant applicant; the ethic was to reject claims. Also, the examiner's judgement was given high authority, and applicants had to make a good case to overturn adverse actions.
Well, the patent bar got pissed and started to get more aggressive about challenging examiners; after all, there was abuse of the system, and it is not much better to reject somtthing over clearly irrelevant prior art then to pass out a patent over a clearly anticipating reference. Also, applicants were concerned that applications were taking several years to get issued, making the whole process too expensive and time consuming.
As a result of these pressures a new bred of management was cultivated to counter this. One of the key provisions of this effort was the creation of the "Compact Prosecution" policy. This said that a typical contested application would receive a first action, then, on response by applicant, a second action, either allowance or a "final" rejection. If finally rejected, the applicant could appeal, but was not entitled to have any pre appeal submissions to be considered except under limited circumstances.
To "encourage" examiners to to follow compact prosecution the perfomance evaluation system for them was changed to significantly count an examiner's "production" by giving a credit for the first action and for the disposal of the application (generally abandonment or allowance).
An examiner still has discretion to make actions after the first non-final, but, clearly, the incentives go greatly against this.
From this beginning, management found an easy metric to rate examiners:very "objective" and requiring little "evaluation" of the quality of the work. Patent examining involved patent application "processing" Real quality only occured by hapenstance such as protest from the outside, but low production was the basis of a ticket out.
As far as the issue of software and business patents, look to the courts for that one; the Office, in true bureaucratic inertial fashion resisted those applications, but the patent bar won in the old Court of Customs and Patent Appeals and its post 1982 sucessor the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. An express change in the Patent Law will be required to change this (or some kind of radical change in the legal thinking of the judges on the Court).