Patent Office Shows Record Backlog

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."

Comments

Yeah...

[CrazyDuke]

Yeah, and us poor schmucks who can't afford several grand in expences have to get a corporation to help and hope they don't screw us. Too bad I can't make any money off of these ideas I have. Innovation my ass.

Re:Yeah...

[Anonymous Coward]

Patents are meant to protect actual entrepeneurs, not just people that sit around in their parents' basement and "invent things". Once upon a time, the Patent Office required an actual working prototype instead of just Powerpoint slides.

If you're one of those guys that likes to file a zillion applications for vague ideas and then hope to sue someone else that actually produces an independent product ten years later, I have no sympathy for you. You could at least look on your few grand as an investment in your extortion scheme.

And if you have a useful idea and can actually put it into production, you'll need to start a company. A few grand for a patent application is peanuts compared to the cost of actually making anything out of some idea. Very often, the idea itself isn't actually the important part; the execution is.

Assumptions

[RealityMogul]

everybody files because just about everything can get one

Now we've all seen plenty of stories where stupid patents have been granted. But I don't think we're getting the entire picture. If they grant thousands of patents a year and we only see 20 stupid patent articles, then maybe they aren't doing the terrible job we're assuming they are. Maybe they are rejecting patents but we just don't hear about it because companies don't publicize their rejections.

I'm not claiming to have first-hand knowledge of the USPO but it's food for thought.

Re:Assumptions

[Jerf]

Actually it's probably patent-worthy. Most physical things are nowadays.

As long as the patent laws are being followed correctly, and the patent on those bags is not considered to be a patent on the entire concept of plastic bags, as software patents often are, there's nothing wrong. The idea of "plastic bags" is not patent worthy, but creating a bag that is cheap, strong, easy to manufacture, and generably usable is a challenge, and once someone puts in the effort to find a solution, they deserve the reward of first rights to market it.

You'd be surprised at how much engineering goes into even the simplest of physical objects nowadays. One of my canonical examples is the turn signal stick; conceptually quite simple, but to make a cost-effective turn signal stick that is reliable over the lifetime of the car, which may used literally hundreds of thousands or millions of times, in a huge array of environmental conditions, with several controls on the stick ('toggle', up, down, often cruise control controls are placed on there), and which needs to be reliable (it's borderline life-or-death if it malfunctions badly enough; I nearly got whacked just two days ago by a car with its right turn signal on that was slowing down when it didn't mean to turn right; if it was on because it failed to reset correctly after a right turn the failure of the turn signal stick could have put me in the hospital), is quite difficult. As long as the patent office is just protecting that exact stick, the patents are OK in my book. It's not until they start granting a "patent" on the whole idea of a toggling stick that we start having trouble.

The converse?

[cybermace5]

We are so quick to rush to judgement. Perhaps even reversing cause and effect?

Maybe the frivolous patents are a result of everyone bum-rushing the Patent Office. There might not be enough time to scrutinize every patent that comes in. Of course this encourages more frivolous patents, making it even harder for the Patent Office to give each patent its due care.

It's an interesting tactic: flood the Patent Office with useless requests, making it impossible for individuals to get their life's work patented. The longer an invention remains unpatented, the better chance of duplicating and marketing someone's idea before they have the chance (because you have all the production capabilities already). Vague patents and lawyers can keep away those who decide to challenge, and most will probably accept a small settlement.

Fee Schedule

[WPIDalamar]

I think the way fees are done for the patent office should be changed. Something that rewards good patents, and penalizes bad ones.

$patentCost = (some constant);

while( patentIsRejected() )
{
$patentCost *= 2;
}

And then we need to reimplement patentIsRejected() to something like:

1) flat-out-reject anything that's already patented.
2) reject anything with prior art
3) Have a QUALIFIED examiner spend some time looking it over.
4) Have a certain public review periond (6 months?) that anyone can register complaints
5) Review complaints (possible reject)
6) Have another, different qualified examiner check it out for an extended period of time.

So let me see if I have this straight...

[bittmann]

From the article:


Last year the office issued an average of more than 3,000 patents a week. It is one of the few federal agencies that brings in more money than it spends.

Some of that money is siphoned off to other agencies _ more than $630 million since 1992.


The Patent Office has a positive cash flow. They actually take in more in fees than they consume, with the excess being diverted to non-productive (from a patent standpoint, anyway) agencies.

So, *of course* the only way for them to process more patents per time unit is to raise the fees.

Yes, I do realize that there are most likely mitigating factors (dealing with problems of expansion, etc.) that come in to play, here, which would make a noticable jump in speed more expensive. But, initial inspection of the problem does tend to make me think "plow the profits back in to the organization. Make *more* profits that way. Remember: The more we process, the more we *generate* here..."

Or could it possibly be an idea of "raise the fee enough to drive off all of these pesky little inventors...thus reducing our workload."

Nah...they wouldn't think that way...would they?

Record Patents

[Stargoat]

Individual efficiency in the workplace has been geometrically rising for the past century and a half. Population has also been geometrically rising dramatically for the past century and a half. Therefore, the number of patent requests also be geometrically rising. Since government bureaucracies tend to be sticky in their use of technologies, it shouldn't be any surprise that there are a record number of patents applications with a large backlog.

Most Patents are Useful

[raehl]

I'm fairly involved in the paintball industry, and I've had occasion due to 10% need and 90% need to procrastinate to read/skim the vast majority of patents related to paintball.

99% of them patent something useful in the industry. Maybe the USPTO drops the ball more often when it comes to software, but there's still a lot of patenting that goes on out there for just regular old "stuff"; genuine, true inventions. Even if you DID manage to find a way to prevent the frivolous patents from getting there in the first place, they're probably less than 5% of the total workload. Maybe 1 or 2%. Because patents are freaking expensive.

Just keep in mind that the way Slashdot "News" articles can make the world look (Many events happen twice! ;)) may not necessarily be the way the world really is. I'm willing to bet that the backlog is 98% due to growth of the economy/country rapidly exceeding growth of staff at the USPTO.