Patent Office Admits Truth — Things Are a Disaster

An anonymous reader writes "For years the US Patent and Trademark Office has published data to show how well it and the patent system were running. Under new leadership, the USPTO has begun to publish a dashboard of information, including a new look at questions like how long does it really take to get a final answer on whether you will receive a patent or not? The pat answer was, on the average, about 3 years. But with the new figures, it's obvious that the real number, when you don't play games with how you define a patent application, is six years. The backlog of patents is almost 730K. And the Commerce Department under the Obama administration wants the average down to 20 months. How does this happen? Only if everyone closes their eyes and pretends. It's time to take drastic action, like ending software patents. As it is, by the time companies get a software patent, there's little value to them because, after six years, the industry has already moved on."

Comments

not my experience

[Dolphinzilla]

I have 3 fairly recent patents (one hardware and two software) - none of them took over 3 years - and two of them took multiple rounds with the patent office

Re:Not just the PTO's fault

[CowFu]

Only if they were stopped by someone like me, explaining to the person why they can't submit this patent. The PTO takes every application seriously which is both a wonderful and horrible thing, until it can be proven un-patentable or that it infringes on an earlier patent. This is done through a semi-long process of research that isn't always done correctly (because of the sheer magnitude of searching for similar patents or parts of similar patents).

On a side-note, I want to clarify that all of those items listed did not get formal paper-work submitted to the Patent Office. If they did they I would not be able to talk about them here or I would be in violation of my previous contract. There are a lot of ridiculous ones that went against my advice and filed anyways.

Little value?

[Philodoxx]

As it is, by the time companies get a software patent, there's little value to them because, after six years, the industry has already moved on.

As messed up as it is, the current system creates more value for patent trolls. If it takes six years to get my patent approved, that's six years "infringing" technology getting baked into competing products.