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.

Comments

That's funny

[Anonymous Coward]

98% of patents are mistakenly granted too!

Breaking News

[ironwill96]

In other breaking news, Jimmy Hoffa was found today on a park bench clutching a newspaper whose headline read "Sun found to be hot!" and "Sky really is blue!".

Patents..wrong..who would've thunk it?

The sky is falling

[Lacit]

Whoa, you mean people actually read patents?

Disappointed

[ilyanep]

I'm disappointed that they didn't offer up any examples. Of course it would be highly embarrassing to whoever filed it, and it would be a bad idea legally, but it'd be interesting to see how badly some people screwed up.

No kidding, Captain Obvious

[Compulawyer]

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.

are you serious?

[Aurisor]

I find it absolutely impossible to believe that people are incapable of writing a single sentance without making a mistake.

Re:are you serious?

[William Robinson]

The mistakes are found by lawyers... :)

An old joke for your reference..

One day in Contract Law class, Professor Jepson asked one of his better students, "Now if you were to give someone an orange, how would you go about it?"

The student replied, "Here's an orange."

The professor was livid. "No! No! Think like a lawyer!"

The student then recited, "Okay, I'd tell him, 'I hereby give and convey to you all and singular, my estate and interests, rights, claim, title, calim and advantages of and in, said orange, together with all its rind, juice, pulp, and seeds, and all rights and advantages with full power to bite, cut, freeze and otherwise eat, the same, or give the same away with and without the pulp, juice, rind and seeds, anything herein before or hereinafter or in any deed, or deeds, instruments of whatever nature or kind whatsoever to the contrary in anywise notwithstanding..."

Another thing.

[Eightyford]

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.

One of the mistakes found:

[88NoSoup4U88]

but approximately 2 percent of the patents examined had errors that weakened the core claims of the patent itself.

Patent Number : US6123456
Issue Date : 12/23/2003
Patent Title : System and method for providing exsellent spelchecking.

You mean like...

[Dr. Eggman]

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

For it's defyance of the laws of physics?

or...

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=6,368,227.WKU.&OS=PN/6,368,227&RS =PN/6,368,227

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)

Re:You mean like...

[flyingsquid]

Interesting patent indeed...

Space vehicle propelled by the pressure of inflationary vacuum state

Abstract

A space vehicle propelled by the pressure of inflationary vacuum state is provided comprising a hollow superconductive shield, an inner shield, a power source, a support structure, upper and lower means for generating an electromagnetic field, and a flux modulation controller. A cooled hollow superconductive shield is energized by an electromagnetic field resulting in the quantized vortices of lattice ions projecting a gravitomagnetic field that forms a spacetime curvature anomaly outside the space vehicle. The spacetime curvature imbalance, the spacetime curvature being the same as gravity, provides for the space vehicle's propulsion. The space vehicle, surrounded by the spacetime anomaly, may move at a speed approaching the light-speed characteristic for the modified locale.

The author is one Boris Volfson. Is that like a cool-ass name for a mad scientist or what? You can almost picture it: "Yes, Mister Bond, it is I, Dr. Boris Volfson, your old nemesis. Do not attempt to reach for your pistol- yes, I can see it quite clearly as one of my eyes has been replaced with an X-ray sensor. At any rate, it would be futile as my rib cage and cranium are reinforced with titanium plating."

Lesser of two evils

[Anonymous Coward]

Laugh all you want, but you really have two choices in the matter. As an examiner, we get on average somewhere near 25 hours a case. That's it. Pick one of the following:

1. Find good prior art.
2. Find spelling mistakes.

My boss yells at me when I point out a spelling mistake on page 13 of the specification because it means I wasted my time doing something other than look for prior art.

Here's a Real Example of a "trivial" Mistake

[Compulawyer]

In Chef America, Inc. v. Lamb-Westin, Inc. the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit (the US Appeals court that hears all appeals in patent cases) found US Patent No. 4,761,290 to be not infringed because the claim used the word "to" instead of "at." Quoth the Court:

The sole issue in this appeal is the meaning of the following language in a patent claim: "heating the resulting batter-coated dough to a temperature in the range of about 400 F. to 850 F." The question is whether the dough itself is to be heated to that temperature (as the district court held), or whether the claim only specifies the temperature at which the dough is to be heated, i.e., the temperature of the oven (as the appellant contends). We agree with the district court that the claim means what it says (the dough is to be heated "to" the designated temperature range) and therefore affirm [the trial court's finding of non-infringement].

As most people know, dough heated to 850 degrees F. is no longer dough - it is charcoal. Not the most effective result for a process that is intended to result in the production of an edible substance.

BTW - the two law firms who tried this case are two of the top firms in the US. I am confident that the parties each spent hundreds of thousands of dollars arguing over a single word. And a very short word at that.

This is a marketing claim!

[cimetmc]

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