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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."
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.
Any sufficiently advanced influence is indistinguishable from control.
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.
I work for a large corporation, and they encourage every employee to try to create 4 patent proposals a year. Coworkers have submitted many proposals, but I don't know in my local group who's gotten a patent all the way through... I don't konw how much rubber-stamping the USPTO is doing given that our legal department is rejecting 90%+ of our submissions.
Become a Patent Attorney. With this kind of glut there's going to be a strong demand for those who can wade through it.
Excuse me while I get back to filling out my patent application for 'carrot and stick'
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Those bastards!
Is this truly the only Earth I can live on?
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.
...
That way, the filing fees can remain low, but valuable patents (which in theory may require more protection) will pay the government for that protection. Something like 1% of profits on the invention. So, a million dollar idea would get the government $10,000 in exchange for the patent protection. If your idea never makes you money (say over $1000), then you don't need to pay it.
e. If they grant thousands of patents a year and we only see 20 stupid patent articles
u s_stat.pdf the US Govt granted 166,000 patents in 2001. It's quite amazing how many they have to go through.
According to this http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/ac/ido/oeip/taf/
Photos.
Good - The two year wait may discourage the frivolous inventions we see, like say This one
Bad - Delays all the great technical inventions that are obsolete in a month
Anyone have any idea how many of these backlogged patents are stupid attempts to cash-in on common ideas?
Like this patent on linking...
or this patent on floating banners...
Why do I h8 apple?
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.
Got fired from your rebate handling job because you were too slow processing applications? Fear no more! Get a job at the patent office!
I think there should be a study to determine how harmful it will be for the society if we move to abolish the patent system altogether. I have doubts whether the benefits of having the current system can outweigh the disadvantages like the chilling effect on innovations coming from individual or small company sources.
> Why should we make the USPTO due the homework of a patent lawyer?
because thats what they were CHARTERED to do. you want randomly hired patent lawyers deciding for themselves that their clients deserve government granted monopolies?
> Another way to filter patents (and lower taxpayer burden) is to leave it up to the courts.
you think trials are free? using the courts to invalidate patents costs much MORE than only granting valid patents in the first place. for everyone, the taxpayer AND the two companies.
> To prevent abuses, there should be strong penalties for filing a patent that gets overturned in court.
increased risk means decreased value. a company should not have to bear the risk of fines later in life if a patent is overturned. the patent fees should cover the cost of evaluation, and if they're not valid they should not be granted, end of story.
> Useless patents are never challenged and nobody cares; useful patents get their due. Lawyers make more money.
maybe they aren't challenged, but they ARE used for bullying smaller companies. heck, they're used to bully companies of all sizes. no, not everyone is happy.
http://kered.org
If you submit an excessive amount of 'frivolous patents you should get fined... a lot, or even better, your patents get reviewed with a lower priority until the 'quality' of the patents goes back up.
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?
The PTO is a fully fee-funded organization. BUT... all the fees they collect go to Congress, who then gives back _A PORTION_ (100%) to the PTO for its operations. If the PTO were allowed to keep 100% of its current fees (without helping balance the rest of the Federal budget with them), the fees probably wouldn't have to go up.
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.
Hoist Number One and Number Six.
For their sake I hope they don't let it get to the 4year mark...
Patent #45560986 Granted to Guy F. Ottawa on April 1, 1999.
Description:
The process of providing a service to individuals (or businesses) who's end result is not conveyed for 4 years (1460 Days).
using System.Awesome;
Small entities already pay less than large entities. For example, the filing fee for a small entity is only $375, compared to $750 for large entities. The definition of Small Entity is long, but, as a starting point, individuals and companies with fewer than 500 employees is considered a small entity.
The PTO is considering a 15% increase in filing fees.
Yeah that's the solution... let's make it even harder for the average joe to submit a patent... that's the problem. Those damn garage hobbyists doing nothing but submitting applications. The nerve. It couldn't be the corporations who don't care how much you charge and submit hundreds of applications a month...
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.
;)) 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.
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!
paintball
People need to understand that the USPTO is a cash cow for the Feds. It made somewhere along the lines of 400 million dollars for the Feds in 2002.
It has done that, in part, by actively encouraging the general public to file for both patent and trademark applications. It has implied to the public that it is easy to go through the application process. It also has a lopsided bonus structure for examiners that encourages quantity, not quality. While I was a trademark examiner, I could have made up to $20,000 per year in bonuses for the quantity of my work, but only about $3,000 dollars for the quality of my work. Does that make any sense if you do not want stupid patents and trademarks being issued!?!
The USPTO has implemented a new strategic plan that will restructure how the PTO handles both patent and trademark applications. Most people in the field believe that this restructuring will increase pendency and decrease quality. You can read the PTO's annual reports and the 21st Century Strategic Plan"
So it should be no surprise that filings are going way up and pendency is going way up along with it... and that more mistakes are made and more garbage gets through. It also should come as no surprise that the PTO has a vested interest in making sure people believe that they can file applications on their own. So it offers "online filing", "online searching" and other tools that are really a poor substitute for having a complete search done by an attorney (or a patent agent). There is no question that some people don't want to put out the money for a professional search, and are willing to chance the money they lose in filing fees. That's fine. There are also those who earnestly get the impression that all they have to do is "file an application" and they will get a registration. Like most things in life (and especially with the government), it rarely works that way.
-A
As to your response to #3 - I think this is one of the most important points, and the one where your response is incomplete. As an engineering law professor at Northwestern once told us, patent exmainers are usually going to be the least skilled graduates in their areas of expertise. Don't believe me? Well, take a look at these two links:
s /gradelevels.htm
First this http://www3.uspto.gov/go/jars/sgs.html
then this http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/ac/ahrpa/ohr/job
So if I've got a degree in Chemical Engineering, I can start at the US Patent office making a whole $32,819 a year! And it gets better. If I have a masters in Chemical Engineering I can start at $47,240! And my reward for these splendid salaries? I get to sit and stare at patent applications all day. Even in this crappy enconomy, those salaries don't look that good. Imagine the kind of employee they were able to hire in the boom of the previous decade. Yeah.
I realize that I could've been nicer and more politic in this post, but...well I have no excuse. I just didn't feel like it.
03.02.26.we | Non-Novel Patents
In addition to the alarm about the unruly expansion of copyright, an outcry over an offensive software or method patent is surfacing nearly every week now. But the storm is not yet upon us, these are merely the first chunky hail stones: it can, and probably will, get much worse.
Patents are supposed to be novel, useful, and non-obvious. However, these are rather subjective criteria that require the discretion of knowledge, experience, and good judgment. Such attributes belong to those skilled in an art, not to bureaucratic institutions. (Witness how those administrative functions formerly administered by John Postel, a skillful and respected Internet elder, are now bungled by ICANN, the bureaucracy now responsible.) However, we have no great patent arbiter, only a governmental process and this has led to a focus on, and misunderstanding of, prior art by computer professionals.
The question of novelty and non-obviousness is proxied by a mechanistic process of push and pull between a patent applicant and patent examiner. An examiner, on his own judgment, can not easily dismiss the application of a proprietary interest worth, potentially, millions of dollars. He can only ask, "how is your claim different than this prior art." Once this dance is done, a court is not likely to disregard the patent's novelty as documented in its file wrapper (the exchange between the applicant and examiner) and the resulting claims.
In the narrowest construction, this process of emulating good judgment with respect to novelty and non-obviousness works: the resulting patent claims are more narrow than the initial application with respect to some existing works. But in the sense of promoting innovation and the "useful arts and sciences" of computer software and networking, it is a huge failure.
As I've mentioned before, "Good technology, often created through simple processes, lends itself to applications unforeseen by its designers." As Lessig, in The Future of Ideas, amply demonstrates this principle is what makes the Internet and Web such an innovative force when as expressed as layered end-to-end architecture. To adopt his metaphor, our common roads permit arbitrary journeys; our private cars permit us to traverse our chosen paths. Much like the Internet and Web, there are no patents or controls on the roads that determine where you must go. (There are rules such as which side of the street to drive on, much like networking protocols, but these don't affect your destination.) It would be a shame to loose this flexibility, and this is just what the patent system encourages: claims that combine our common infrastructure and abilities in "novel" ways.
It's as if roads and driving themselves are recognized as an important infrastructure and ability, but someone could patent using a car on a road to drive to my house. Is using a car on a road to drive to my house really that novel? The Patent and Trademark Office can not make this judgment well, it will only look for prior art of someone previously, explicitly, specifying this exact method in the past. Perhaps they will find the method of driving to my house that I've provided on the Web. The applicant might then amend their application such that they have a claim for a car, on the road, driven to my house using a stick shift, and a new claim for the same using automatic transmission. The claims have been narrowed and there is no previous exact d
Raising the fee isn't supposed to be a deterrent. It is intended so that they can get more money to hire more people to handle the workload.
I've got a mind like a steel trap - it's got an animal's foot stuck in it.
Quick example, a friend of mine asked me once how to make the mouse pointer invisible. I told him how. He was granted a patent on that idea. Now, given that I repeated to him what I was taught, it's clear that it was prior art, obvious, etc. yet he still received the patent. The patent office doesn't know what its looking at, so its granting everything! So, why not go ahead and patent chicken soup?
"Stop whining!" - Arnold, as Mr. Kimble
I hope a conscientious moderator will mod down my uninformed rants.
Patrick Doyle
I mod down every jackass who puts his moderation policy in his sig. Oh, wait a sec....
One other possibility is to file something called a Provisional Patent Application. These applications are not examined and will never become patents unless you file a Utility Patent Application. But the date you filed it is an official record then.
I filed an elegant and cost saving answer to the solution - but I want to make sure it is patented... they said it should get through in only 3 years.
I feel like I'm helping.
There are some odd things afoot now, in the Villa Straylight.
IEEE Spectrum magazine's Invention Department has been covering the patent backlog for the last few months, and the PTO's plans to do something about it. It's a matter of personnel--you have 3400 examiners looking at over 400 000 patents currently pending, with maybe a quarter million new ones coming in over the transom every year. The bloat of business method patents and software patents is particularly crippling, and the PTO's plan to out source prior art searches isn't going to solve the problem. David Kushner (author of the new Masters of Doom book on Romero and Carmack) visited the PTO to see what was going on in February. Scott Kariya wrote a piece on the proposed reforms in December 2002. Read on at:
p la te.jsp?ArticleId=i040203
p la te.jsp?ArticleId=i120202
http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/careers/careerstem
http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/careers/careerstem
First is that the examiners at the USPTO primarily use the applications and granted patents in their collection to search for prior art, so in these fields (which were only recently, in patent terms, patentable) there isn't a lot of history.
Second, while the number of applications is way up, the number of examiners hasn't changed much. The amount of time available for each examination is very short, on the order of 30 minutes, so the re-check in item (6) isn't likely to happen.
IANAL
;-)
;-)
However, I do know that patents vary in scope quite a bit. If you are the first one to patnet the turn signal stick, your patent might be on the entire concept. Others might have to use buttons, etc. I suspect that the concept of using lights as signals has not been patentable for a REALLY LONG time (prior art).
When a patent gets filed and even approved, it can be difficult to determine how wide the scope is without going to court (and having the scope narrowed by examples of prior art, etc). This can be very costly for the plaintiff who has to be prepared for every piece of the patent to be attacked. If you think filing for patents are expensive, ask a lawyer about enforcing them
Now the plaintif's attourney has to try to uphold the patent in the broadest scope possible.
However, if a patent for a hyperlink were to be approved today, I would not stop using hyperlinks and would let them drag me to court. I think there are plenty of examples of hyperlinks being used for just about anything that the concept is probably no more patentable than the concept of a nail is for fixing shingles on roofs
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
The United States Patent and Trademark Office fees have been paying for significantly more than the cost of operating the Office for many, many years now. Instead of turning those funds into additional resources, the federal government has for years, through administrations both Democratic and Republican, siphoned off the surplus, and then some, for general revenues.
In other words, inventors are paying for our tax cuts already -- not the other way around. Want better examinations? Tell the government take its mitts off the fees. Right now, the fees are paying for our wars.
Then why are you acting like you do?
only USPTO workers educated in that field(computer science, for example) would be able to accept patents
Patents are already grouped into different technology centers. See this page for a broad overview of the different technology centers. After an application is filed, it is categorized (see here for the different categories) and an examiner in the appropriate technology center is assigned to the application.