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Mistakes Found in 98% of US Patents
Artem Tashkinov writes to tell us The Register is reporting that almost every US patent contains at least one mistake. The findings from a recent look by Itellevate, a firm that offers support services to intellectual property lawyers, claim that most of these errors are trivial but approximately 2 percent of the patents examined had errors that weakened the core claims of the patent itself.
That's why the USPTO has something called a "Certificate of Correction." Many of the mistakes are allowed to remain because it isn't worth the cost of filing for correction. I'll be the first to admit that many others are there because of a lack of due care. However, careful practitioners have at least one other person (more often two other people) besides the drafter proofread the application before it is sent to the PTO and the drafter also proofs the published patent if the application is allowed to issue. Despite what the linked article claims, this is NOT an appropriate activity to be offshored. It requires not only careful reading but mastery of both the English language and the technical terms of art. The USPTO is much like a computer in at least one respect - it follows the GIGO rule for data processing.
Laws affecting technology will always be bad until enough techies become lawyers.
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PT O1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=/netahtml/srchnum.htm &r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=6,960,975.WKU.&OS=PN/6,960,975&RS =PN/6,960,975
T O1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PALL&p=1&u=/netahtml/srchnum.htm &r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=6,368,227.WKU.&OS=PN/6,368,227&RS =PN/6,368,227
For it's defyance of the laws of physics?
or...
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=P
This one; recanted because of a technicallity in its wording, even though it's trying to patent swinging on a swing. (Both links were off wikipedia)
Demented But Determined.
Yes I completely agree. If you don't work for a company that will fund you and take over the patent rights anyways its very expensive to do it yourself. That means you either have to fund it yourself, around 10,000 - 15,000 last time I checked, or try to convince some VC or bank to fund and then they will get part of your idea.
There should be simpler ways to file patents for the average individual who has an idea and wants to protect it with a well written patent.
In other words, nothing to see here. Only adds to the shrillness factor of the anti-patent crowd. Many patents are questionable at best, but a 2% rate of "trivial" errors is a non-issue.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
I recall several instances where after transcribing a taped letter, verbatim (with my own spellings of the words transcribed, of course) that the attorney would read, cross out lines, add words, change statements, etc., until the letter that was transcribed was absolutely different from what was put on audio tape.
Then, when the 'final' product was rendered to the 'printed word', it was reviewed once again and had usually two or more changes, usually re-arranging a statement or adding some other synonym.
As one other Slashdotter respondent noted, it would be nice if everyone had learned to "clean up after themselves"; however, in this case, I think it is more of some person hoping that hindsight is "20/20". (I wonder if someone is going to actually patent 'hindsight'.)
It's interesting to see that someone is taking a 'janitorial' point of view on this mess. Not sure what can of worms it could open up potentially, but in the end, we usually end up paying for our mistakes.