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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.
As with everything you read, please consider the source. In this case, the sole source of the facts here is a firm that specializes in support services for patents. That's not to say that their findings are incorrect, but you should do your own research before quoting or taking other action based on their results.
Do you want to know another thing that I think is wrong with the patent system? You do? Great. I think patents are too expensive for the average individual and too cheap for the average corporation. Too bad I don't have any suggestion to make the patent system better.
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Please when you read the article, don't forget who is behind the study.
This is one of those typical statistical claims that people use to push their products. In this case, it is a company specialized in helping people to make their patent filings and they try to use statistics to scare people making them think that their patent filings might be invalid due to mistakes and thus hope they use the services of the company.
If you really want reliable statistics on the number of patent filings with mistakes and on the consequences off those mistakes, you should never trust such claims from a company who uses them purely for marketing purposes. This is a bit similar to Microsoft's TCO claims on Windows versus Linux.
I simply say that the source of these statistics is biased and as such the statistics are unreliable. They might or might or might not be true, but I would certainly not trust them.
Marcel