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Broken Patent System? Google, Apple Disagree

Posted by kdawson on from the with-a-straight-face dept.

Whiney Mac Fanboy writes "The AlwaysOn Stanford Summit featured the panel discussion 'The Patent Crisis: Crossroads for the Business of Technology.' Speakers included patent lawyers from Google, IBM, and Apple. According to The Register, Google's and Apple's patent jocks had diametrically opposing views. Google's head of patents believes the system is in crisis: 'The Patent Office is overburdened,' she said. 'The volume of patents going in is huge. And the quality of patents coming out — it could be better.' But Apple's chief patent counsel said the US patent system was 'not broken' and 'not in crisis,' calling it 'the best in the world.'"

2 of 230 comments (clear)

  1. Google is right... by josepha48 · · Score: 4, Interesting
    .. and apple is wrong, take it from an ex-patent examiner.

    The way that patent examiners work is by number of actions on a case. Each patent application is a case and there are only at most 2 actions on a case: first action, usually a rejection for something; final action, either the patent is allowed or denied. Allowing a patent on the first round only gives you one action. The patent examiners are expected to complete a certain number of actions each week. As the patent examiner stays there longer they need to complete more actions. A new patent examiner, GS-5 or GS-7 would have to do about 4 patents every 2 weeks, where a GS-11 would have to do about 7 every two weeks. This never ever ever takes into account the complexity of the patent either. A 10 page patent application gets the same attention as a 150 page application. It does not take into consideration that the job is boring as hell unless you like dealing with lawyers.

    Many patent examiners are not from the technical fields that they are working in and some are fresh out of college. Patent examiners are government employees and thus have the same lazy attitude that most government employees do.

    Anyone who has been on /. for the past 5 years and seen some of the stupid issues that have come up because of patents would know that the USPTO (United States Patent and Trademark Office) is completely jacked up and not working.

    Take it from me, I worked there, and to reject a patent I would have come up with any f***ed up logic just to get it out the door on time, and usually allow them the second time around, unless I really did come up with some good BS

    --

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  2. The PTO is not the biggest problem here. by muerdeme · · Score: 4, Interesting

    "Most patents issued are never litigated and never licensed," he said. "We need to focus on fixing the litigation system. That's most relevant."
    I couldn't agree with Apple's counsel more.

    Everyone seems content to blame the PTO for the problems in the patent system. The reason there are patent trolls applying for superfluous patents is not because they know they can sneak the applications through the PTO's inefficient, government run system. The patent litigation laws in the US are the source of the real problem. The massive potential returns on litigation make it economical for the trolls to exist, and, in turn, force the big companies to use their patents "like shields" against each other. One golden patent application in a 1000 is all it takes for a troll to pay for the fees associated with all of them.

    Get rid of the trolls and unnecessary patents by making them uneconomical, not by forcing the PTO to hire PhD's. With a lower upside to litigation, every application that is filed must necessarily be of a higher quality in order to make it worthwhile economically.