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Patent Office Shows Record Backlog

Posted by michael on from the free-money-get-your-free-money-here dept.

acroyear writes "WTOP, 1500am, a news radio station in the DC area, is reporting that the Patent Office Is Seeing Record Backlog, with 2 years for a patent now, and potentially 4 years to wait by decade's end, and the PTO is considering a 15% increase in filing fees. Personally, I think if they had set a trend of actually rejecting patents that don't belong, they'd have sent enough of a message to keep application numbers to a reasonable level; right now, everybody files because just about everything can get one."

1 of 235 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Fee Schedule by ivan256 · · Score: 5, Informative

    2) reject anything with prior art

    Already done.

    NO IT'S NOT!

    I'm sick of people with no clue spouting this shit in slashdot comments and getting modded up to propagate this incorrect information.

    Repeat after me: You can patent things that have prior art.

    In fact, it's completely allowed and the prior art is usually documented right in the application. A patent does NOT mean the holder has exclusive rights to everything in the patent. It only gives them exclusive rights on the claims that exceed the prior art. Half the time I see people bitching about some silly patent on here, they fail to take this into account.

    Please people, before you go spouting off about prior art in patents, make sure you know what you're talking about and that you didn't get that information from a slashdot comment that was posted by somebody who could be a clueless toddler for all you know.