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Patent Office Proposes Reform
leabre writes "The NY Times (subscription required) is running a story about how the Patent and trademark office is trying to reform itself. Among some of the reforms sought, is higher fees for the initial processing fee, higher fees for more than 20 claims, higher fees for the more work the examiners have to due (lower fees for less work and fewer claims), 2000 more examiners, and required continued relevance of the examiner in their field (certification and re-certification). My favorite quote "...Mr. Rogan says excessive claims not only slow patent processing but contribute to poor-quality patents." They are trying to crack down on abundant claims and too-technical jargon which they claim overworks the examiners, reduces the quality of the patent, and other things. Worth a read."
Higher fees means more income for them and less work. The major beneficiaries of the patent system is the patent offices themselves.
... here.
Just patent patenting.
Higher fees are not a solution. They just raise the stakes, so companies will try even harder to win patents. Likewise, or contrastingly, the "little guy" who comes up with a legitimate invention is even less likely to be able to win a patent for it. These "reforms" will serve only to line the bureaucrats' pockets with the blood of the independent inventor.
Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)
.. i noticed this while trying Google's news search. If you go here:
here
You can find the link here:
here
No registration required.
Live web cams
A Method For Reforming A Patent Office
doh!
So, it'll be run like a dot com? When's the IPO?
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
Ok, it's a big "IF", but if they spent the money on better prior art searches, perhaps it might improve the system. For example, in my experience with patent submission, the US patent office only appears to search for prior art in its own published patent database, while say, in Europe, the EPO seems to look a bit harder.
Of course, extending it to looking through well-known journals relating to the particular art would be even better, but just looking at foreign patent databases (relative to the USA) would be a start.
Notice how there is no mention of changing the process for "business process" patents, like the Bezos "One-Click" and now infamous "eBay" patents.
Raising the fees only help big corporations, which of course want to patent everything under the Sun, probablly including the Sun, just like BT's frivilous patent on "links".
There needs to be some sort of improvement in prior art review. How come a couple thousand of us /.ers can find prior art, but the USPTO can't even use Google?????
Patents we devised to be accesible to the small guy and were designed to help increase innovation. Now they are used as ways for big corporation to squash people from even thinking, and the DCMA only adds to that.
D.O.U.O.S.V.A.V.V.M.
Bigger fees means nothing to corporations but is very hurtful to individuals. This is not a step forward for the rights of individuals, just another leg up for corporations that will do little for the quality of patents. It might stop the 1% most absurd, that's all.
The PO's reforms seem to consist of just charging higher fees. Have they been reading from the Microsoft Guide to Innovation?
But he's not going far enough. Simply charging more for more patent filings isn't going to stop the companies that exist to do nothing other than file patents. They'll just factor it into their business models and pass the costs on to licencees.
What the PTO needs to do is to charge punitive fees when they reject patents. Yes, you heard me. Currently, they get their income from granting patents, so there's absolutely no, zero, zilch, nada incentive to reject, and so there's no disincentive to file.
Let's turn that on its head. Patents should be granted grudgingly. Examiners should be looking for excuses to reject them.
I'd quite seriously propose a deposit of $10,000 for each patent filing, most of which would be refundable on granting. I want filers to be sure that they're actually filing genuine inventions, and I want the PTO examiner (and/or subcontractor) to be eyeing that $10,000 as her reward for finding prior art that you've missed or "forgotten" to mention.
If $10,000 looks like a lot, then consider how many genuinely novel inventions you're likely to have during your working life, and compare that to the number of cars you might buy over that same period. If you still think that's too much for basement inventors, then consider that they can always sell their idea to one of the patent swallowing companies, and we can go back to business as usual.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
1. Hire more patent officers, raise patent fees
2. ???
3. Patent reform!!
Sig for sale or rent. One previous user. Inquire within.
Isn't one of the reasons that large companies are able to get patents out faster and more often is the high fees in the first place? Way to squash the little guy.
And exactly how would all this have prevented the sideways swinging patent #6368227? How much expertise and certification to you need to spot the prior art in THAT one?
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
The Patent & Trademark Office seems to have spent most of its time over the past decade trying to reform itself. With "customer" satisfaction surveys running in the 50 - 60% range, they know they have a problem.
For example, about a year back, they came out with software for electronic submission. Codes things in XML. Nice concept, but the software was virtually unusable. God knows how much money they spent on that. Their flawed electronic search system is another example of ineffective, grossly expensive automation projects.
Another very basic issue is that they seem to lose half the papers people send to them, and then commit significant resources to reviewing and ruling on the proof that the submitter actually sent the papers. This is routine. The most important part of any submission to their office, regretably, is the proof of mailing.
Then there's the touchy issue of quality. Some of the people who work there are highly competent and dedicated. But a lot of them are really inexperienced. Adding 2000 more will just make this worse.
The commissioners (who have been rotating with considerable frequency of late) always say they want to run the office "like a business." Well guess what? It ain't a "business" and it never will be.
They keep talking about their mission to serve "customers," i.e. the people who file patent applications. This is infuriating. They seem totally to forget that the key part of their mission to to represent the PUBLIC. At one point, a past commissioner actually wanted to privatize the office (and make himself the CEO). They should start thinking about what serving the public actually means, and just lose the part about trying to be a "business." At this point, that would be the most useful "reform," in my opinion.
So how many of them would he have paid $10000 for?
e .h tm?site=http%253A%252F%252Fedison.rutgers.edu%252F patents.htm
http://history1900s.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsit
What the applicant would do to avoid complete rejection (and avoid paying your added rejection fee) is just to modify the claims so as to avoid all prior art...
The problem with your scheme is that it chills potential innovation, which is what the original patent idea was all about--grant a monopoly for a few years in return for disclosure of good stuff, heretofore unknown.
What the
THe reason that the USPTO does not search google is b/c most of the USPTO examiners who work on s/w patents are EE's, who may not know enuf background on s/w stuff to be effective at searching google for some patent on web design....so what the uspto needs is more comp sci oriented examiners, but the uspto hiring process is slanted towards engineers....
Sig:
Navy nuke sub lifestyle?
Well, they're off to a bad start on reform if they going to try and take away the technical jargon. That will simply make the process too vague and would allow it to apply to much more than it should be.
The answer is not to dumb things down, it's to hire people that can understand the technical jargon in the first place.
I recently applied to become a patent examiner. I met one of the supervisors who encouraged me to apply, after hearing about my background. Several months later, I learn they're not hiring unless Congress gives them a bigger budget.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
If the patent is written in a way to make it obscure and not understandable (by suitable reviewes), then it should be rejected and the filing fee kept. This should stop comanies trying to "innovate by obscuration" and should also lighten the load on the patent office.
----------------------------------- My Other Sig Is Hilarious -----------------------------------
Hemos has thrown a bone to the open source Luddite crowd. Given the pronounced lack of original and innovative software coming from open source, that's ironic.
Typically, some advocate abolition of the patent system entirely, a comfortable way to avoid dealing with a real problem by campaigning for the untenable. Still, I guess, it gets them street cred around here.
How about going after legislation that loosens the corporate grip on employees' inventions? How about going after legislation that would compel real reform of the Patent Office? How about going after legislation that resolves the issue of software patents?
Given that open source is increasingly confronting broader political issues sparked by attempts to apply open source doctrine beyond the software development model, why the lack of serious political lobbying and organized effort?
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
you have no idea do you? The main problem facing the office is pendancy, that is, in some technologies it takes 4 years from the date of filing before a new application reaches an examiner because of the increased number of filings. Hiring 2000 examiners will reduce pendancy because there are only so many cases an examiner can do.
http://www.popa.org is the patent examiners union. Read their critique.
Bring back the old version of slashdot.
WRONG, you didnt read the whole thing didin't you!
There would be a major change in the examination process. Examiners would no longer search for prior art, it would all be submitted by the applicant and the search would be preformed by a private search firm. The examiner then would then determine patentablility via that search.
There are several problems with this:
1. Patent examiners know what prior art is out there because they deal solely in a specific technology area (and are intimatly familiar with those sets of patents of record). What happens if the examiner knows of prior art not listed by the applicant? (This has yet to be addressed.)
2. There is a conflict of interest by the private search firm. They are being paid to find prior art that the applicant really doesn't want them to find.
3. You are removing a function of government by eliminating searching.
for more info, http://www.popa.org
thats the examiners union, im not a member by the way.
Bring back the old version of slashdot.
for more info read the patent plan and the response via the examiners union.
i nd ex.htm
http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/com/strat2001/
http://www.popa.org
Here are a few of the changes.
There would be a major change in the examination process. Examiners would no longer search for prior art, it would all be submitted by the applicant and the search would be preformed by a private search firm. The examiner then would then determine patentablility via that search.
There are several problems with this:
1. Patent examiners know what prior art is out there because they deal solely in a specific technology area (and are intimatly familiar with those sets of patents of record). What happens if the examiner knows of prior art not listed by the applicant? (This has yet to be addressed.)
2. There is a conflict of interest by the private search firm. They are being paid to find prior art that the applicant really doesn't want them to find.
3. You are removing a function of government by eliminating searching.
Bring back the old version of slashdot.
The issue is not only localized jargon, I suspect some of the jargon is really an attempt to apply new words to old concepts, so as to minimize any prior art comparisons. How else can anyone explain the things that get patented in spite of obvious prior art?
What about higher fees depending on the size of the company/coorperation? and idea?
I submitted this story some 3 or 4 weeks ago with a link to an actual USPTO proposal document.
Anyway, this is not something to get too excited about. Every time the USPTO thinks it needs money it makes these proposals. The complaints are always similar - too many claims, too difficult, yada yada yada. I even once ran across a newspaper story from the 1930s which complained of the same things (interestingly, back then, USPTO examiners were required to know a second language).
"The problem with your scheme is that it chills potential innovation"
In what way? You can't prove a link between patents and innovation. In fact, based on history, I could argue that patents have a chilling effect on innovation.
Real innovation comes about through the free exchange of ideas, not through cross-licensing of patents from major corporations.
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
Higher fees are not a solution. They just raise the stakes, so companies will try even harder to win patents.
No. Higher fees, by themselves, do not raise the stakes--they simply raise the cost.
If I increase the price of a front-row seat for a concert, I don't make the seat any better--I just make it harder to get that seat.
Higher fees mean that companies need to work harder for the same effect--and low-yield nuciance patents will drop off a bit. (Maybe not a lot, but a bit; plus the added patent office $ will help improve the quality of each patent application review.)
Likewise, or contrastingly, the "little guy" who comes up with a legitimate invention is even less likely to be able to win a patent for it. These "reforms" will serve only to line the bureaucrats' pockets with the blood of the independent inventor.
When was the last time an "independant inventor" all by himself won out anyway?
In any case, most patents are applied for and used by businesses who have cash. The solutiuon for the independant inventor is a "private citizen" rate, not to set up the system assuming that everyone's poor.
(Perpetually deferred fees sound like a good model: if I come up with something new, I can patent it, and I only have to pay the fee if I actually make money out of it.)
1. Patent examiners know what prior art is out there because they deal solely in a specific technology area (and are intimatly familiar with those sets of patents of record). What happens if the examiner knows of prior art not listed by the applicant? (This has yet to be addressed.) The examiner can use whatever knowledge in his possession in order to invalidate a patent (whether derived from a 3rd party or not) Yes, that is true as it currently stands, but the new patent plan is ambigious on this. 2. There is a conflict of interest by the private search firm. They are being paid to find prior art that the applicant really doesn't want them to find. They are being employed directly by the PTO. If they do not catch enough prior art, then they will lose their contract. So where is the conflict of interest? The search firms would be paid by the applicant, notby the PTO. 3. You are removing a function of government by eliminating searching. Searching for prior art is a function that can be performed effectively by any organization, government or not. So why specifically are you identifying it as a "function of government". The function of government (judicial branch and/or PTO) is to rule on the "art" in the patent based upon the content of the "found" prior art. Searching is part of the examination process, the government has no conflict of interest as it doesn't recieve ownership of the patent (but does get issue and renewal fees). A fair and impartial search is a sovergin function. On a side note, in europe, the examination and search functions are done by two different people within the EPO, they are switching over to the US system.
Bring back the old version of slashdot.
Did you read the part about having to re-certify and stay relevant in their fields? Do you think that will weed out a fair amount of examiners who cant do thier job? Why is that not adressing the problem.
What Rogan does not explain is why the fees for claims should increase exponentially with the number of fees. If your linear relationship is off, reset the slope dammit! It isn't right to punish an inventor because his invention is complicated.
Fees should probably be higher, the USPTO should be allowed to keep all its fee income and pay the examiners accordingly or supplement the research resources the examiners have. The fee probably should be higher for longer patent applications. (Yes, it is the same fee for 10 pages of description and 1000 pages of description now.)
Patents are granted unless the PTO can find a reason not to. ("A person shall be entitled to a patent unless --" 35 U.S.C. 102) Shorting the examiners of time and resources necessarily leads to bad patents getting out.
Part of the reason that patent application fees are low is that the U.S. Patent system is a "winners pay" system. After the patent is allowed you still have to pay a publication fee, an issue fee, and then maintenance fees at 3, 7, and 11 years. That way, small inventors can take their shot but not bear the full cost unless they get a patent.
What Rogan won't confront, is that the darn points system, which basically is a system where you require the hamsters to run a little faster each year, is not the right management tool (at least in a vacuum). The only thing that supplements it now are "customer satisfaction surveys". Mind you, having the USPTO be polite and responsive is ok, but please notice that QUALITY OF ISSUED PATENTS just does not enter the picture. Please, FIX THE METRICS. If it takes money, which is must, then raise fees. Don't just raise fees to hand money over to Congress though.
A general response to the original thread:
The Patent Office sees about a fifth of 1 billion dollars in fees that it makes for the government.
It seems pretty clear to me having (up-until-recently) worked at the Office, that the PTO is marked as a "cash cow" for the new Homeland Security Office. And why wouldn't it be when it makes all that money for the Feds!?!
I may be a minority on slashdot, but I don't think there is anything wrong with IP in general (whether it be copyrights, patents or trademarks. Yeah, am I definately biased because that is where I make my living. BUT the current system of extending patent and copyright term protection just isn't effective for the fast moving world of computer software and business methods. I think (or maybe, I hope) that over the next several years, the Feds will figure out that software and business methods are essentially without value after a few years on the market and reduce the term protection for those patents to a "reasonble" four or five years (I say "reasonable", because that seems reasonable to me based on what I know).
Thus, the inventor gets a chance to make his money when the invention has real value and the rest of the tech industry can spend the next five years coming up with a "better virtual moustrap."
-A
Reject any patent application with the words "but with a computer".
Eliminate software patents, and on all others require a working demonstration and copy to go to the patent office. That should help.
The Consumer Project on Technology does a lot of work around patents, particularly business methods patents and patents that restrict access to medicine. They aren't well funded.
Public Knowledge is a new group that does work in the IP area. They are more focused on copyright at the moment but work on patent issues as well. They are better funded and more focused on IP issues.
The only way to get rid of ridiculous patents is to require a minimum of (documented) effort spendt on inventing (in my opinion minimum 12 months of work).
Rationale: If something is so easy to invent that it only takes a week there is absolutely no reason to grant an exclusive worldwide monopoly for that.
Bonus benefit: a single inventor will have little problem documenting all his/her spendings and effort while big multinational companies will probably have some degree of undocumented effort.
When you are sure of something, you probably are wrong (search for "Unskilled and Unaware of It").
There's no proof that patents are acting in the way you describe. Common sense tells you that what you're saying is true. But I think we're seeing evidence ("one click buying", for example) that patents primary use is to preempt ideas from competitors rather than protect implementations.
So, I'll ask you. What evidence do you have that patents are working in the manner you describe?
You were mistaken. Which is odd, since memory shouldn't be a problem for you
You may have some bizarre definition of "not making money". From a 4/01 News.com article:
In other words, the USPTO takes in more money than it spends. The extra goes to other government programs. Now maybe you don't call it "making money", but that's exactly what it is. And the top-level poster is correct that the patent office could be spending more of its revenues checking applications.Small inventors are the losers here, but at the expense of quality (or at least a step in the right direction)
/. can cut out some of these ideas and plug them into your own, and make this idea stream a bit better?
I still think other countries would benefit from this document avalanche in the US.
How?
Have a small nation like Haiti (or other nation that owes $$ to the US) create there own patent offices, with certified specialists, (probably from the US) then have a UN agreement accepting the mini-patents as art for all prior art cases, with the possibility of full patent rights after 5 years. The mini pats can only be filed by the average citizen, and can only fit on one sheet of paper, with a fontsize of 8 as the minimum font size. One extra sheet can be added for Graphics, or pics, and the price would be $50, of which the US gets paid $40-$45 from the country in question. Of course... the small country would accept applications from acceptable countries all over the world, this would bring in money from other countries, and not just recycle american money.
This will lower the cost of patents for the small time inventor, help other nations pay us back some of there debts, and have a system of recording prior art.
Maybe you guys at
Mabidex
...from an earlier post of mine:
I know how to do away with all of this patent nonsense from here on out.
I'll make a machine that will approve or reject patents, and store them on microfilm. I'd like it to look like something Terry Gilliam would animate. A huge throw switch for accept/reject. An elephant on a treadmill for a source of power. Two rubber stamps, one for approved and one for rejected. A huge bellows to dry the ink. A massive series of lenses, mirrors and candles to reduce the image down to microfilm size.
Then, I'll patent it. If it gets rejected, I'll keep changing components until it passes. Replace the bellows with a cage of pigeons and a box of popcorn and resubmit.
Once I get my shiny new patent, I'll wait one week. Then I'll tack on the words "with a computer" and resubmit. We all know that the magic phrase "with a computer" makes a new patent. Ask Jeff Bezos - he'll tell ya.
Now - it'll be illegal to use a computer to store or approve patents. It's my idea now. The entire process will have to be done by hand. If you want a patent search...well the patents number around the 4,700,000 range. If it takes a minute to read a patent, then it'll take about 20 man years to prove it's original. By then it won't matter.
And just in case the government gets any funny ideas about "prior art" - well we know those lawsuits aren't ever won. Look at Wizards of the Coast. They managed to patent card games for chrissakes. Even though prior art of all kinds exists *cough cough* Steve Jackson *cough*.
But, I'm a reasonable guy. If they press their case strongly enough I'd be willing to settle out of court. Just pay me a nickel royalty for every patent in your database and I'll be okay with that.
Weaselmancer
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
My manager push certain "patent pending" communication protocol spec, so I could implement the ideas on it to solve the particular problem we were dealing with. After careful examination I concluded that the patent application was bogus; there was nothing original about it, plus, it did not satisfy its own claims (recognized later, in private, by the author). It took me a week or so (I have 10+ years of experience on the field) to go through the documentation due to the redundant, hyped and pompous language used to describe the "invention". I am absolutely sure that the patent office is not going to notice anything abnormal in this application; the author will receive the appropriate incentives and recognition, the company will add one more patent to its intellectual property list and at the end of the year you may be able to see countless reports, wired infoporn included, with inflated "innovation indexes". The real, objective value added: 0. Welcome to the innovation machine.
No mention that I could see is made about how to kill the trivial patents. It's not enough that something is new, it also has to be non-trivial to invent; you should never be able to patent something which would take a few engineers an hour or two to come up with, if they are asked how they would solve a certain problem.
Killing the trivial patents is the most important reform the patent office has to make.
...that the patent office is run by a bunch of idiots. Do they not understand that it is the people with all the money who are screwing the pooch? Most of us can not afford to get a patent because it costs too much in legal fees, research, etc...
Oh well...
Jamey Kirby
What's this Submit thingy do?
Fees are signifigantly lower for small companies or independant inventors.
/ fe e20011001.htm
http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/ac/qs/ope/1999
look at the right hand column. The fees are half price for the most part.
Bring back the old version of slashdot.
When the government is found to be doing a poor job at something (as it always is, due to its nature) the standard response is to charge more for it-- obviously it must be lack of money that is the problem. So they raise fees.
This is how we have the situation where the average single person pays over %50 of their income in taxes, and still doesn't get adequate fire coverage, adequate roads, adequate health care.
Any REAL patent reform would require taking it out of governments hands and putting it into an entity that has an incentive to provide a good job. For thats is why government sucks-- it has no incentive to do an adequate job, and so it doesn't.
Structure an entity such a way that it makes more money with good patents and its unprofitable to issue bad patents and you'll then have a good patent office.
Until then, the patent office will continue to give the socialists among us an excuse to complain about how "All property is theft".
Yeah, and you guys panned the ipod too: http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/10/23
1) The airplane.
fortunately for WWI, the government stepped in. Without patent protection, the airplane industry innovated like NO OTHER industry in history within a span of 10 years.
2) The revolver
Colt's patent completely killed all pistol innovation for the period of his patent. All improvements to his design were squashed. The revolver remained unchanged until the patent expired
If you care to look, history is very clear on this. Patents may cause a single spurt of innovation, but ALL innovation on a given invention ceases from the time the patent is given until the time it expires. This is an intentional side effect of patent law.
the vast majority of patent applications are not algorithim or business oriented. For example the electrical engineering area, in particular telecommnications is way behind the curve for examinations.
The patent office didn't suddenly decide, ok, lets patent software and business methods. It was the appicants themselves, who used the court system, particualy the court of appeals to force the pto to begin to examine these types of applications.
Fault the courts and the applicants themselves. its not up to the pto to legislate or interpret the law, that falls to congress and the court system.
Bring back the old version of slashdot.
Does this mean that Microsoft will finally lose the trademark on such obsurdly common words as, "office" and "windows" etc?
If not, then I hereby request trademarks for my new products: A(r), An(r), and The(r).
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
patents have protection for twenty years from the date of filing. What you are saying was true until several years ago.
As a result, it is in the applicants best interest to file and have a patent granted as soon as possible since their protection runs out.
Bring back the old version of slashdot.
Among some of the reforms sought, is higher fees for the initial processing fee, higher fees for more than 20 claims, higher fees for the more work
Charging more money and telling us it's good, because it helps reduce bad patents... uhhhhnnn, ya.
They are trying to crack down on abundant claims and too-technical jargon which they claim overworks the examiners, reduces the quality of the patent, and other things
Better idea, rather than charge the general public more, why not have a contractual counter/penalty charge implicit for those who try to copyright things that are already existant, very obvious, or in use, by crouching them in so much technical crapspeak that they pass simply because nobody can understand them.
What if I don't have the money to apply for a patent? or to pay an attorney?
The other poster had some good examples, too. In reality if it's a 10,000,000 project you're likely not going to have too many competitors anyway. And the R&D could be 10,000,000 but it's highly unlikely that simply duplicating a process would run 10,000,000 for materials. And last I saw they weren't patenting the stealth bomber. I guess I should go out and build one in the back yard.
so what you are saying is that it is ok for someone else to come along, take the ideas of your creative friends, pass them off as their own/manufacture a product based off of them thus jepordizing their jobs?
Bring back the old version of slashdot.