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

The solution is simple.

[Jesus_666]

Reduce military spending by 90% and allocate those resources to the USPTO. We're told over and over that intelectual property is the single most important industry in the world and makes approximately many times as much money as all other industries combined (not to mention that civilization depends on it) so if given the choice between a new stealth bomber and a thousand new patents on business methods it should be obvious that the bomber is not the way to go. If another country wants to invade the USA, the USA can simply threaten to sue their companies for all the patents they violate; that should be a much larger deterrent than superior weaponry or nuclear-payload ICBMs.

Let's look at Iraq. Iraqi insurgents do well with AK-47s and pipe bombs but Iraq has virtually no patents. The US Army keeps losing soldiers over there but the American standard of living is much higher. It's clear that if the USA want to stay ahead the solution is cheaper guns and more patents.