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.""

Comments

Same name problem

[ReformedExCon]

Lots of people with the same name in that database.

Kind of like the Nobel prize a couple years ago where there were a bunch of people with the same name in the research department of the winner in Japan.

For those that didn't read the article, USPTO is bad and grants too many broad patents to obvious and common things.

does anyone else find it fascinating...

[__aasmho4525]

(and maybe a little depressing) that in so many parts of our (western) culture, we value quantity over quality?

to wit:

"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."

the nation's greatest inventor, in my mind, would be the inventor that has most positively impacted society at large with their inventions, etc, etc. basically, a totally subjective unit-of-measure unless we find some nice way of ranking the value of a given patent to society...

it's just curious how often this happens....

(large houses over well constructed houses, etc, etc, etc).

enjoy.

Peter

What's frightening about all this...

[Niraj59]

After reading the article I got to thinking about the controversy surrounding the subjective assessment of a patent. When does a patent become too general? When does it go from covering an invention to covering something that is convention?

I think it's especially terrifying in the computer world because it seems that many USPTO employees don't know what is standard practice and what is innovation. This article from Salon reviews some ridiculous patents and patent claims

Generally subjectivity plays a small role in governmental organizations (think about the IRS and all its coded forms). It seems that the USPTO is a strange organization in that sense. Does anyone know how the process works? To me it seems as if it's just reviewed by a bunch of people who may or may not understand what it is their awarding a patent to.

Re:What's frightening about all this...

[playit12]

Once more with proper formatting:

Whatever PTO examiners don't know about standard practice is dwarfed by what Slashdotters don't know about Patent Law.

First, as has been explaned numerous times before, each patent is reviewed by someone with training in that select field. For example, a patent for an LCD is reviewed by someone that has reviewed LCD patents, often for as long as LCDs have existed. It's quite common for these specialized examiners to be as adept in the field as any inventor working in that same field. This isn't surprising considering that those examiners will be reading some 1000 or more pages related to the field every day in their searches.

Second, the claims define the patented subject matter. Without sufficient legal background it's impossible to understand the meets and bounds (legal protection) of the claims. Reading out patent titles or parts of the specification is useless to understanding the legal ramifications of the patent itself. There is a reason why nearly all cases brought before the office are by lawyers representing inventors and not by the inventors themselves.

Third, it is in the best interest of the inventor (most of all) to allow good patents. Bad patents cannot be enforced in a court of law and are therefor not valuable to the inventor. As the filing fees for a patent often exceed several thousand dollars (and attorney fees are even more), people who pursue bad patents only harm themselves.

Fourth, just because you have a patent doesn't mean you can use it. A patent on some random element of a flower pot is only useful in that third parties find it useful and without an alternative, and the patent will be upheld upon extensive review by other attorneys.

Lawyers understand the quality of the USPTO far better than the average public. The USPTO is a favorite selection for PCT (Internationally filed Patents) searches primarily because they offer the best quality search and examination in the world today. Here no patent is awarded, and the sole goal is to find the best, most relevant art before filing nationally in other coutries.

Of course, feel free to ingore this or mod it down so you can continue to sound ignorant to those that have bothered to understand the details of Patent Law.

USPTO should offer patents like grants

[SEGT]

I recently got setup to apply for a grant from NIDA and thought if patents were treated in a similar manner we might be better off. To get accepted your application goes to a board of individuals who are physicians. They are still working in their respective fields and understand what is innovative in the medical field and what is not. They determine if your grant goes through. Think, "what if patents were treated this way?" You enter your patent in a category and it is accepted/denied by those who are knowledgable in the field. They will be able to tell if you are patenting the obvious.

Re:Yes

[lbrandy]

My personal experiences with the patent office has been nothing but excellent. I hold two, one in chemistry and one in analog electronics. Most people on this forum "believe" the system is broken because that's what they hear continiously. And while there are certainly problems, anecdotal evidence isn't sufficiently indicitive of systematic failure. The Patent Office has one of the most unenviable positions possible, and yes it is often easier to grant borderline patents and let the courts handle it later (since, technically speaking, the argument goes that it's cheaper to litigate the .001% of borderline patents granted, then litigate 100% of the borderline patents not granted)... that doesn't make it right... but expecting an organization like that to be able to be perfect is just ridiculous.

The Patent people that I dealt with were -very- competant and -very- effective. It's a shame that the tiniest fraction of mostly trivial stuff gets 99% of the press.. I guess that's life.

Re:Yes

[dtfinch]

Until I find a better one, perhaps one of my favorite patents is #6,341,372, desribing a "Universal machine translator of arbitrary languages", able to make perfect translations in real time with zero knowledge of either language, like on Star Trek. It goes on to talk about such translaters being used by androids powered by perpetual motion. The rest is just chapters upon chapters full of philosophical ranting about existance, quantum physics, and the universe, maybe pasted from another source. Filed in 1997, granted in 2002. I came across this patent while searching to see how many "perpetual motion" patents the USPTO has granted so far.

Re:Yes

[montyzooooma]

The USPTO doesn't help itself when they consider patenting storylines and other makebelieve. Originally you were meant to have a working model before you would be granted a patent but now it seems possible to patent a "concept" and hold other people to ransom with it.

Re:Yes

[internewt]

The rest is just chapters upon chapters full of philosophical ranting about existance, quantum physics, and the universe, maybe pasted from another source.

It does look like the text is from elsewhere. I skipped through the text of the patent, just to see if it is all solid ramblings, and spotted the below in the section titled "DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS"

Aware of its existence, the android perceives and changes the same reality of human corporal experience, including the reality of the cosmos. This book, an introduction to the theory and science of androids, is intended to acquaint the reader with this new technological finding and to mark the beginning of an androidal age in which sentient machines alter the human universe.[My emphasis]

So it looks to me like this patent wasn't even fully read before being granted, though it looks to be about 12000 words!