Slashdot Mirror
USPTO Unable to Find Top Ten Patent Holders
lelitsch writes "So a journalist tries to interview the top ten patent holders in the US. As he finds out, neither the USPTO, nor the patent processing companies are able to identify them. Even more surprisingly, "America's greatest inventor is apparently an obscure guy in Japan who makes stuff most people can't comprehend. And the nation's greatest native inventor seems to be a man who has come up with 100 different ways to make a flower pot.""
Yet more conclusive proof of the USPTO's utter incompetence, from the people who brought you "Contradictory Patents Teach Us To Get Along" and "Everyone's Got A Little Prior Art Sometimes, That Doesn't Mean We Go Around Invalidating Patents"
If I have not seen as far as others, it was because giants were standing on my shoulders. --Hal Abelson
The thing is, anyone can get a patent. Much like the flower pot guy, quantity of patents does not necessarily mean that the person is the best inventor. Perhaps a better topic would have been the top 10 most productive or innovative inventors. Dean Kamen gets my vote on both.
According to the article IBM is the #1 company - but they were looking for individuals.
Personally I'd be suprised it Microsoft made the top 100, they've not been around for as long as the heavyweights, and their field has been fairly limited until recently.
Advanced users are users too!
"We try to be its policeman and end up with egg on our faces for the last 40+ years."
So South Korea and Kuwait could've won their freedom from oppressors on their own, and all the nations under Soviet control in eastern Europe (whose elected leaders all mysteriously died at the same time) were nice and happy? Taiwan and China could come to a peaceable understanding?
I agree with a lot of your criticisms about modern America, but I think your absolutist view of its involvement in the past half-century is a bit short-sighted. Its reputation isn't squeaky clean (ie, Lumumba in Congo), but there have been some genuine righteous triumphs as well.
I know you're trying to be funny, but your suggestion would be inadequate.
There's no analogy to a "user_id" for issued patents. There's no requirement that an inventor record his name the same way (James Doe vs. Jim Doe) and there are more than a handful of foreign language inventors who change the English spelling over time. There's also the issue of joint inventorship. You invent a powerswitch that makes electric tools more efficient and file 3 applications: with Steve the electric drill inventor, with Tim the electric saw inventor, and with Bill the electric belt sander inventor. You also file an additional application with William (who happens to be Bill) for an electric rotary sander. You have invented one powerswitch, but your name shows up on 4 patent applications (with 3 different people). People get married, omit middle names, omit "Jr." and more.
And finally, seriously, who the feck cares who has the most inventions? Who really thinks the patent office needs to assemble a team? Get right on this? Grab this bull by the horns? It's hard to imagine a more frivolous outrage.
I know you were just cracking a joke, but eh. The patent office has a public search facility. Stop by if you're in Alexandria VA. I happen to be somewhat familiar with what they've got in their database and why it's not so simple to answer this question. If you want to know how many times a particular name appears on a patent it would be simple to produce, but that is not the same question as who has made the most inventions.
This is analogous to the difference between what the spec says and what the customer wants. You build the product to the spec but that wasn't what the customer wanted. I'd think that this should be a familiar concept on Slashdot, but suddenly everyone is so shocked by precisely the same phenomenon. Honestly I think the patent office should have just patronized the guy and told him whose name appears on the most patents. It wouldn't come remotely close to actually answering the question about who has the most inventions, but who the feck cares?
Of course you feel the USPTO did a good job, you got what you wanted. Now what if in fact they were initially right and you were wrong? What if they simply allowed themselves to be persuaded by inadequate arguments in order to save time and get the application processed? It's easy enough to be happy with a system that gives you exactly what you want, but that isn't evidence that it's working.