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US Patent Operations May Shut Down In Second Week of February (bloomberg.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office said it may have to cease patent operations in the second week of February if the partial government shutdown continues, though it has money for trademark work through mid-April. Any furlough of staff could mean significant delays in reviewing the tens of thousands of applications on inventions for things like telecommunications hardware and the next cutting-edge medical treatments. Now it takes on average 15.8 months before a patent applicant can expect a preliminary response from an examiner. More than 640,000 patent applications were filed in fiscal 2018.
The patent office, part of the Commerce Department, is funded entirely by user fees and gets no tax dollars, but it requires an appropriation from Congress to spend the money it collects. In fiscal 2018, it had a budget of $3.3 billion and has asked for $3.5 billion for fiscal 2019. The patent office sets aside authorized money in what's called an operating reserve to account for "temporary changes in our cash flow" and that's what it has been using to stay open since the partial shutdown began Dec. 22. At the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30, it said it had 1.3 months of operating expenses for patent operations and 4.9 months of expenses for trademark operations.
The patent office, part of the Commerce Department, is funded entirely by user fees and gets no tax dollars, but it requires an appropriation from Congress to spend the money it collects. In fiscal 2018, it had a budget of $3.3 billion and has asked for $3.5 billion for fiscal 2019. The patent office sets aside authorized money in what's called an operating reserve to account for "temporary changes in our cash flow" and that's what it has been using to stay open since the partial shutdown began Dec. 22. At the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30, it said it had 1.3 months of operating expenses for patent operations and 4.9 months of expenses for trademark operations.
On top of this, surely the guys flying their private jets around wouldn't like air-traffic to get grounded or for themselves to get in an accident? Just read today that many air-traffic controllers are now working second jobs out of necessity leading to sleep deprivation which sounds like the perfect combination of factors for some massive fuckups to happen. And that's what they're saying. Trump is playing with lives here.
I'm so glad right now that I'm not American because this shit is insane to follow even from the outside. Like, the government is essentially using close to a million people as slave labor right now and putting actual lives at risk because the guy in charge is a dude with the brain of a toddler that wants a massively expensive wall that will do nothing. I mean hell, didn't it just come to light in the el Chapo trial that the cartels are using planes, self-made submarines and tunnels to smuggle stuff in? And isn't it public knowledge at this point that most people who're in the US illegally have entered there legally? How many American lives is this shit worth? Because this keeps going and people will die as a result, that should be clear.
This shouldn't be a partisan issue at all. Like for fuck's sake Republicans: let Trump throw his tantrum about the wall and any other shit as much as you want, but do it without trying to actively ruin the finances and lives of hundreds of thousands of people. Why do they insist on letting him hold the country hostage? I thought there was supposed to be checks and balances. To top of the idiocy the republicans themselves don't want the wall, they could have passed the funding for that prior to the elections but they didn't, so what the fuck is this shit? They're letting a man-baby hold the entire government hostage for what, exactly? Are they this fucking spineless? Because it sure seems that way.
Of all of the outright moronic shit the Solarium Sultan with 'a very good brain' has said and done is this clusterfuck of a presidency, this shit takes the cake. This is beyond idiotic, and I hope you guys now that the longer this goes on, the more you're being laughed at abroad, because at this point it's the only thing left to do. It's absurd, and for the sake of the Americans I know and care about, I really hope you guys get your shit together, because this is some truly dangerous banana republic level bullshit. I expect this from like an African or a south American country, not the fucking US of A.
"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" -Alfred North Whitehead