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

We have to narrow "patentable subject matter"

[ciaran_o_riordan]

They're under-resourced, but increasing their resources won't solve the social and economic problem caused by the patents they grant on software. A lot of big patent holders are saying that the solution is to increase review standards, but how would that happen? How do you put clear limits on whether something described is sufficiently innovative, or sufficiently useful?

The only simple way to reduce the workload of the patent office is to cut certain fields right out of consideration. Start with software. Making the USPTO more efficient isn't our goal, but it's a happy coincidence that there's a solution to our problem that just so happens to solve a major USPTO problem.

And it's not just the USPTO. The European Patent Office has the same problems.

• United States Patent and Trademark Office
• USPTO 2010 consultation - deadline 27 sept - important!
• Raising examination standards won't fix much
• Software is too abstract, patent quality is bad

Re:Big Software Corps

[Machtyn]

The problem with your argument is that in many cases the government has given us a multitude of opportunity to be suspicious of it. There has always been a distrust of government in the US.

So, extending this distrust to all government agencies is a natural thing to do, whether it is true or not. Try bribing a policeman - a large percentage of the time, you'll end up in jail. Try bribing a politician... oh, wait.

The patent system is made up of scientists and engineers, and the attorneys all have these backgrounds as well.

If that is the case, then why do they mess some patents up by not seeing prior art? Yes, mistakes happen and I suppose there is a process to work it all out. But while that process is rolling, the patent holder is out there drying up the coffers in attorneys fees of all potentially infringing users.