Posted on 04/21/2008 10:26:58 PM PDT by anymouse
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office recently received an application seeking a patent for what was claimed to be a better way to stand in line while waiting to use an airplane toilet.
Jon Dudas, director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, said the example may be extreme, but it illustrates the declining quality of U.S. patent applications his agency has seen since 2000 as more applicants attempt to game the system.
Speaking at an IP symposium here on Wednesday (April 16), Dudas said the quantity of applications for U.S. patents is skyrocketing--more than 500,000 applications are expected this year alone--but quality is suffering as corporations and individuals increasingly seek to turn intellectual property into a legal asset rather than a means to technology innovation.
"We've seen a problem with quality," Dudas said, adding that U.S. patent approvals have slipped from a high of 72 percent of all applications to the current level of about 42 percent. While part of the decline likely results from better patent examiners, Dudas questioned whether the current system is "making it too easy for people who want to file poor [patent] applications?"
The patent office estimates that corporations are doubling the number of patent applications they file each year. Dudas said he suspects one reason is that some companies are using the U.S. patent system to "close out" competitors in the race to innovate. Indeed, experts estimate that intellectual property now accounts for as much as 70 percent of a corporation's assets compared to 30 percent a decade ago.
As Congress debates whether and how to reform the U.S. patent system, Dudas said policy makers are seeking the best way to ensure that the patent system rewards innovators while making it harder to game the system. The agency is trying to determine "what is the right set of rules for innovation," the patent chief said
Patent reform legislation pending in the Senate has been slowed by opposition coming mainly from the pharmaceutical industry. One fear, Dudas said, is that reform proposals may have the unintended consequence of "over-correcting" the current system. Instead, Dudas said, patent reform should promote higher quality patent applications and faster decisions about whether or not a patent will be issued.
The U.S. patent office has been hiring new patent examiners at a steady clip. Of the 2,400 new examiners hired over the last two years, many have engineering backgrounds. The agency has also implemented fast-track reviews of patent applications designed to reduce examinations to as little as 12 months. It is also working with Japanese counterparts to slash the time needed to win patent approval in both the U.S. and Japan from the current 86 months to as little as 15 months.
For international patent protection, applicants must currently file five separate applications in four different languages. Dudas said he doesn't see a global patent system emerging any time soon.
The head of the US Patent Office, Jon Dudas, the same guy who was just hyping up a educational curriculum for children falsely claiming that any inventor "needs" to get a patent, is now complaining that the Patent Office is being overwhelmed with really crappy patent applications. You think? Lerner and Jaffe pointed this out years ago and it's not difficult to see why. With the USPTO approving tons of bad patents, and the courts all too often siding with the patent holder and expanding what's patentable, combined with people who have done nothing getting hundreds of millions just for holding a piece of paper, is it really any surprise that the incentive structure would push people to file for as many bogus patents as possible, in hopes of getting them through the obviously questionable process?
When you set up a system that rewards people for not actually innovating in the market (but just speculating on paper), then of course, you're going to get more of that activity. When you set up a system that rewards those people to massive levels, well out of proportion with their contribution to any product, then of course you're going to get more of that activity. When you set up a system that gives people a full monopoly right that can be used to set up a toll booth on the natural path of innovation, then of course you're going to get more of that activity. When the cost of getting a patent is so much smaller than the potential payoff of suing others with it, then of course you're going to get more of that activity. The fact that Dudas is just noticing this now, while still pushing for changes that will make the problem worse is a real problem. Patents were only supposed to be used in special cases. The fact that they've become the norm, rather than the exception is a problem, and it doesn't seem like anyone is seriously looking into fixing that.
IP is poison to innovation.
Part of the blame goes to the National Science Foundation, which has been taken over by social workers who put the main focus on education of minorities rather than science.
Here is clear abuse of the system:
http://www.google.com/patents?id=T2QKAAAAEBAJ&dq=%22swing+on+a+swing%22
Dudas and Doll are directly behind the coverup of alternative energy in the United States of America.
The true quality "clean energy" patents have been stalled, and covered up by their unlawful SAW Memrandum
which is collusion to prevent any clean, alternative energy or even
room temperature superconducitivity for American citizens.
If Congress or President Bush cared (and they do not), Dudas and Doll would both be fired,
replaced, and moved to Guantanamo for investigation of their helping enemies of America during war.
Where did you come up with THIS fantasy? Read the section of the Constitution that established the Patent and Copyright system--nothing there about "special cases".
Nobody knows what will succeed in the market until they try (see the "Hula Hoop" as an example), and you can pretty much forget "trying" (as in getting venture capital) if you don't have a patent.
“The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office recently received an application seeking a patent for what was claimed to be a better way to stand in line while waiting to use an airplane toilet. “
A few years ago someone received a patent for a new way to swing on a swing.
http://www.google.com/patents?id=T2QKAAAAEBAJ&dq=%22swing+on+a+swing%22
And it issued.
"Obvious" is a bad word. Well, there were billable hours burned in preparing it. They have hired an awful lot of new examiners, and my last few applications took quite a bit of back-and-forth before issuing -but it looks like this guy won the lottery, and managed to get an examiner who never used a swing as a child.
Glad I retired.
Haha, with enough billable hours, anything could be made complicated. The strategy is to numb the examiner with verbiage. I am in an idle moment, so to have fun:
Rotating Device.
(Hereinafter called "Wheel")
.
.
.
Detailed description of the preferred embodiments.
In the first example, a 12" disc was hewn from an oak log, the center of which was bored with a 1" hole through. A shaft was prepared fashioned likewise of oak so as to allow free rotation between the first and second articles, such end(s) being liberally lubricated with mutton tallow.
A second disc was likewise fitted to the distant end, and the assembly mounted upon a mule sledge.
It was discovered the mule was able to transport a fully laden sledge, so equipped, tirelessly all day.
CLAIMS:
1: A load bearing device consisting of a round disc, mounted on a shaft, so as to allow low friction motion.
2: The device as in Claim 1, not designed for load bearing or physical rotation, but consisting of an array of Aztec markings about the periphery so as to sequentially count lunisolar years and compute eclipses. ...etc.
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