Slashdot Mirror
A Day in the Life of a Patent Examiner
ahdkd writes "Forbes has an older article which describes the world of patent examining: Search 500,000 Documents, Review 160,000 Pages In 20 Hours, And Then Do It All Over Again. Might help people understand the USPTO and patents in general a little better."
You know whats a lot easier than reading all that stuff? Simply approving the application.. then a nice nap.
I believe this article is yet another nail in the coffin of the patent system. It is time to rethink the patent system. Economist Fritz Machlup has proven that patents do not entice corporations to develop new products; in fact, the "short-term advantage a company derives from developing a new product and being the first to put it on the market may be incentive enough."
Patents offer a authoritarian power to destroy competition, increase prices, and skew the relationship between research and creation by scaring off new ideas developed on old ones.
My feelings on this are simple: do it right or don't do it at all.
If the government can't create a system that approves patents corrently then there should be no approval process at all, and thus, no patents at all. It would be better to let the market protect innovators, however weak the protection, than to let a flawed patent office allow innovators to be harmed by those that would exploit the flaws.
I mean, Ok. They get fired for saying that they can't do their jobs. They would be able to go to almost ANY news outlet and get their story printed . Patent Office fires worker for complaining about unfair practices . That would not look good for the USPTO.
I also find the article "lacking" in explaining HOW they search let alone WHERE they search.
If the internet isn't used , Why don't they mention it - We don't bother to check google if the idea exists already. We only look if it is already patented, not if it already exists in the public domain.
UPS Sucks
You could solve most of the problem if you required the item to be physically created, or at least fully designed, before granting a patent. It's ridiculous to grant patents to mere ideas -- the flood of patent lawsuits over web techology claimed in patents before the web existed is a clear example.
There was a British TV comedy about the manipulation of government by the civil service (and vice versa, sometimes :-) called 'Yes Minister', and 'Yes Prime Minister'. One of the favourite tactics of "Sir Humphrey" (civil service mandarin) is to deluge the minister with reams of information, to make it completely impossible to make a decision by a given deadline.
It strikes me that when a patent is 160,000 pages long, someone is trying the same tactic. Perhaps there ought to be a limit on the size of patent applications. After all, if it is sufficiently revolutionary to be awarded protection from its possible competition, it ought to be easily stated and understood. Let anything else just compete.
I suspect some would lose out, but I also think the patent system overall would win. The original patent applications were on a single sheet of paper....
Simon.
Physicists get Hadrons!
This is exactly what is wrong with the (current) patent system. It is supposed to promote innovation but instead it is used as a tool to put sticks in the wheels of the competitors.
When you are sure of something, you probably are wrong (search for "Unskilled and Unaware of It").
also for individuals who don't have the resources to produce the products but have the ingenuity and drive to create the new products. and as such the patent system allows them to still reap the rewards of their hard work. I don't think corporations need patents either, but the patent system or something like it still needs to protect the little guy. disbanding the patent system punishes the little guy while rewarding the big corporations.
Then they can resign. $45K starting salary rising to $90K for a 4 day week? Fuck them. Let's subcontract the whole lot to India.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
So, if you know you can't possibly do a good job in evaluating that volume of patents, why not slow things down to a crawl, and do stuff the right way? Sure, we'd still be looking at the merits of the application for the patent for the transistor, but isn't that better than no-look rubber stamping of bullshit like one-click shopping?
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
Here's a quote:
When a patent is first filed, the key hurdles are novelty and obviousness; i.e., does this idea really represent something new, and is it informed by a particular creativity? Eighty percent of patent applications are rejected for failing to meet those first hurdles.
Someone please tell the writer about some of the "novel" patents issued by the USPTO.
It does seem that the process for creating patents is largely incapable of determining the validity of patents. It works more like a sanity check, and barely that.
Considering this, it would make more sense if it were cheaper for external entities to challenge patents after they were created. As things stand, it takes thousands, or sometimes tens of thousands of dollars to challenge even the most obviously flawed patent.
We could, for instance, create a standard reveiw process where an individual presents evidence of patent conflict or prior art. Since the claimant is doing much of the research in advance, the cost should be considerably less.
Wake up - the future is arriving faster than you think.
I might have more sympathy for this view were it not for the fact that pharmcos spend twice as much on advertising as they do on R&D
My next sig will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush
The USPTO IS in the black. Has been for years. It is one of the few agencies that makes money for the gov't. The problem is that the funds incoming to the USPTO from the public go into the general government fund, not in the USPTO's fund. Then, every year, the USPTO has to grovel to congress for money. It usually gets less than it asks for and ALWAYS gets less than it generates (its called diversion and many think it amounts to an unconbstitutional tax on inventors).
Also, the USPTO actually looses money on the examination fees it charges. Although it can cost upwards of $20K in attorneys' fees to prepare and file an application, the governement filing fees are usually less than $1,000. The USPTO makes about 2/3 of its monry from the maintenance fees that existing patent holders have to pay to maintain their patents in force.
My favourite quote, in light of the Microsoft Anti-Trust settlement, has to be the following:
"Esther Kepplinger, deputy commissioner for patent operations and self-described "supervisor of supervisors of supervisors," was one of fewer than ten examiners doing biotech patents 30 years ago; she has overseen a fifty-fold increase in demand and specialization. Still, she says "when you're experienced at this, you can make decisions whether you know the art or not," a process she compares with a court's ruling on antitrust in high technology."
and this is a good thing?!
That is a major symptom of the problem. Obtaining a patent should be just a notch below the level of rare and high achievement required to be an Olympic medalist, discover a new galaxy, or win a Nobel Prize. For crying out loud, you are saying that none of the other six billion people on earth did what you claim to do, and that no one else will naturally create that when faced with a similar problem in the course of their work. That is an extremely strong statement against the rest of the human race, and IMHO there aren't enough inventions that rise to the standard of novelty to truly deserve 190,000 patents in a decade.
If the USPTO were more strict with upholding a high standards for patents, the vast majority of applications that are submitted today would get thrown out even before commencing a prior art search. Eventually, the flood of applications would be reduced to a small number of worthy contenders, which would be a much more manageable load.
Unfortunately, the policies of the USPTO put the burden of proof on the patent examiner. They have to grant the patent unless they can find prior art or make a strong case why the creation is obvious. But the burden should be on the applicant to impress the examiners with the device's originality and utility, because a patent granted in error places a very high burden on the rest of society. The benefit of the doubt should be given to the public at large, not the patent applicant. Until that policy is changed they will be flooded with frivolous applications, and be pressured to grant patents for most of them, because it is so much more difficult to deny them.
"It was never the object of those laws to grant a monopoly for every trifling device, every shadow of a shade of an idea, which would naturally and spontaneously occur to any skilled mechanic or operator in the ordinary progress of manufactures. Such an indiscriminate creation of exclusive privileges tends rater to obstruct than to stimulate invention. It creates a class of speculative schemers who make it their business to watch the advancing wave of improvement, and gather its foam in the form of patented monopolies, which enable them to lay a heavy tax upon the industry of the country, without contributing anything to the real advancement of the arts. It embarrasses the honest pursuit of business with fears and apprehensions of concealed liens and unknown liabilities lawsuits and vexatious accountings for profits made in good faith."
-- US Supreme Court (Atlantic Works v. Brady, 1017 U.S. 192, 200 (1882)).
---------
There is inferior bacteria on the interior of your posterior.