Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

The Real Problem With the US Patent System

Posted by Zonk on from the slow-down-man-what's-the-rush dept.

Pachooka-san writes "An article in the Washington Post touches on the 'real' patent problem — the quotas that Patent Examiners must meet. They have no effective quality standards, only production standards, so many applications get only cursory review just so the PE can keep up the grueling pace. The USPTO is the only government agency that can and does lay you off if your productivity drops below 85% of the standard for your civil service grade. A Primary PE has to process 5 new and 5 old applications every 2 weeks (that's 8 hours each, folks). The best part — that 28-box application mentioned in the article? — it gets the PE the same credit as the smallest application. How many of those 28 boxes do you think even got opened?"

5 of 173 comments (clear)

  1. Eureka! by bobdotorg · · Score: 2, Funny

    I'm going to patent a a quota system for government offices to use to lay off employees. The details of which will be somewhere in box 8 of 13.

    --
    __ Someday, but not this morning, I'll finally learn to use the preview button.
  2. ITS BROKEN FIX IT!!!!11ONE by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Funny

    (caps lock is cruise control to awesomeness)

    1. Re:ITS BROKEN FIX IT!!!!11ONE by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      ITS BROKEN FIX IT!!!!11ONE

      Did you know that you can work around a broken Caps Lock key by holding down either Shift key as you type?

    2. Re:ITS BROKEN FIX IT!!!!11ONE by maxwell+demon · · Score: 2, Funny

      Are you sure that doing so wouldn't violate a patent?

      --
      The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
  3. Re:Patents are very difficult to read by Cheesey · · Score: 2, Funny

    Would you want to do the same with source code? Sure you could write both source and an "English" version that makes sense to non-techies but you're going to have a lot of ambiguity in the English version.

    REM I see your point.
    /* In fact I have never understood why programming languages allow you to add comments. */
    // Real programmers don't write comments.
    -- Real programmers figure out what code is supposed to do just by looking at the syntax.
    # Writing comments is a waste of everyone's time, and comments waste valuable disk space.
    % I hate well-commented code.

    --
    >north
    You're an immobile computer, remember?