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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.