Patent Office Shows Record Backlog 236
acroyear writes "WTOP, 1500am, a news radio station in the DC area, is reporting that the Patent Office Is Seeing Record Backlog, with 2 years for a patent now, and potentially 4 years to wait by decade's end, and the PTO is considering a 15% increase in filing fees. Personally, I think if they had set a trend of actually rejecting patents that don't belong, they'd have sent enough of a message to keep application numbers to a reasonable level; right now, everybody files because just about everything can get one."
Any other Fortune 500 employees? (Score:5, Interesting)
The government should create a "patent tax" (Score:5, Interesting)
thousands (Score:4, Interesting)
According to this http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/ac/ido/oeip/taf/
Good and bad (Score:2, Interesting)
Bad - Delays all the great technical inventions that are obsolete in a month
how many (Score:4, Interesting)
Like this [wired.com] patent on linking...
or this [pcworld.com] patent on floating banners...
How about fining companies for abuse (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Yeah... (Score:5, Interesting)
I have an idea I'm working on, hoping to get to the filing point within the end of the year. After building the prototype, I'll be out close to a grand. After filing, I'm looking at investing almost $8K on this idea. With only the hope that it will work.
It is a major setback for inventors and entrepeneurs, as it gets rather difficult to do this without some decent backing. Luckily, I have a few people who like my idea and will be helping out after I show the prototype.
It still is difficult to do, more so than it should. What I would like to see is that your first patent sets (for a specific project, limit to) should be provided free, then additional patents for a seperate project should be very expensive. You get a good, easy one shot for a good idea, and if it sucks, it's hard to do it the second time.
And if you have a useful idea and can actually put it into production, you'll need to start a company. A few grand for a patent application is peanuts compared to the cost of actually making anything out of some idea. Very often, the idea itself isn't actually the important part; the execution is.
To bring any idea to fruitation, you should look towards spending upwards of $10K. The sad part is, most of this is filing fees and seldom goes into building the actual device. After the prototype I can contract to a firm to make the devices for probably $100 a piece, and marketing will bring it to $150 (Or less, if I sell over ebay...) and I can easily make $50 profit on each item, assuming they sell.
So, I have to sell approximately 100 before I even cover the filing fees. Great fucking deal.
65-70 percent business method patents rejected (Score:5, Interesting)
USPTO is a cash cow (Score:5, Interesting)
People need to understand that the USPTO is a cash cow for the Feds. It made somewhere along the lines of 400 million dollars for the Feds in 2002.
It has done that, in part, by actively encouraging the general public to file for both patent and trademark applications. It has implied to the public that it is easy to go through the application process. It also has a lopsided bonus structure for examiners that encourages quantity, not quality. While I was a trademark examiner, I could have made up to $20,000 per year in bonuses for the quantity of my work, but only about $3,000 dollars for the quality of my work. Does that make any sense if you do not want stupid patents and trademarks being issued!?!
The USPTO has implemented a new strategic plan that will restructure how the PTO handles both patent and trademark applications. Most people in the field believe that this restructuring will increase pendency and decrease quality. You can read the PTO's annual reports [uspto.gov] and the 21st Century Strategic Plan" [uspto.gov]
So it should be no surprise that filings are going way up and pendency is going way up along with it... and that more mistakes are made and more garbage gets through. It also should come as no surprise that the PTO has a vested interest in making sure people believe that they can file applications on their own. So it offers "online filing", "online searching" and other tools that are really a poor substitute for having a complete search done by an attorney (or a patent agent). There is no question that some people don't want to put out the money for a professional search, and are willing to chance the money they lose in filing fees. That's fine. There are also those who earnestly get the impression that all they have to do is "file an application" and they will get a registration. Like most things in life (and especially with the government), it rarely works that way.
-A
Re:Raising fees is ridiculous (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Slow down of progress (Score:2, Interesting)
Quick example, a friend of mine asked me once how to make the mouse pointer invisible. I told him how. He was granted a patent on that idea. Now, given that I repeated to him what I was taught, it's clear that it was prior art, obvious, etc. yet he still received the patent. The patent office doesn't know what its looking at, so its granting everything! So, why not go ahead and patent chicken soup?
Re:The government should create a "patent tax" (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Any other Fortune 500 employees? (Score:3, Interesting)
I have 8 applications in my name, and two patents issued in my name (jointly - the whole project team in each instance)
Are the inventions worthwhile? Not in the slightest. But collectively, the sizeable (400ish?) portfolio of patents enabled my previous employer to add about a 15% premium to the company's price tag when they got bought.
For me, I suspect their mention on my resume` helped by employability and/or my salary at each subsequent job.
Plus I have some spiffy plaques in a box somewhere in the garage.
--
Re:Yeah... (Score:2, Interesting)
Don't let patents bog you down if you think you have a really good invention. It's really not a big deal. Suppose patents were cheaper or free. So you have a patent, big deal. If someone infringes on it, you still have to get together money to sue them. If you can't get together 5-8K to file a proper patent, what makes you think you can get enough money to sue someone with the resources to redesign and market your invention before you have a chance to make money on it?
The only thing I'd add... (Score:2, Interesting)
First is that the examiners at the USPTO primarily use the applications and granted patents in their collection to search for prior art, so in these fields (which were only recently, in patent terms, patentable) there isn't a lot of history.
Second, while the number of applications is way up, the number of examiners hasn't changed much. The amount of time available for each examination is very short, on the order of 30 minutes, so the re-check in item (6) isn't likely to happen.
Re:USPTO is a cash cow (Score:3, Interesting)
The work environment has even become worse than when I was there, since the making of the case to reject claims has become more difficult do to a progression of CAFC (Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, where all contested patent cases, both from the Office, and from the Federal District Courts go, and basically makes all the patent law since the Supremes don't take many patent cases) decisions that force the examiner to justify rejection of every feature, no matter how trivial. This has just added the burden to get out an office action, but the time an examiner to look at a case has not been comensurately increased. This results in lots of applications just jammed with lots of stupid, trivial dependent claims that used to be brushed off with a very general statement, or, in years gone by, could be ignored by the examiner on the doctrine of "multiplicity"
Exacerbating the problem is that fact that they have problems recruiting people, even in this post dot com tech depression, since the pay is still relatively low (by industry standatds), The atmosphere is one of being a production mill rather than a real professional environment, and, well, it is "The Gummint" Still, compared to many other govt agencies you won't see lots of people just goldbricking around, becase of the constant pressure to get "numbers", which is reinforced with reports every bi-week (SPE (boss) to examiner "Why was your production only 85% last bi-week?)
As for the business of being a cash cow, this was done by Congress as part of the overall smoke and mirrors accounting, another instance of robbing Paul to pay Paul (or was that vice versa?). Not surprising coming from our political "leadership".
Scope of patents (Score:3, Interesting)
However, I do know that patents vary in scope quite a bit. If you are the first one to patnet the turn signal stick, your patent might be on the entire concept. Others might have to use buttons, etc. I suspect that the concept of using lights as signals has not been patentable for a REALLY LONG time (prior art).
When a patent gets filed and even approved, it can be difficult to determine how wide the scope is without going to court (and having the scope narrowed by examples of prior art, etc). This can be very costly for the plaintiff who has to be prepared for every piece of the patent to be attacked. If you think filing for patents are expensive, ask a lawyer about enforcing them
Now the plaintif's attourney has to try to uphold the patent in the broadest scope possible.
However, if a patent for a hyperlink were to be approved today, I would not stop using hyperlinks and would let them drag me to court. I think there are plenty of examples of hyperlinks being used for just about anything that the concept is probably no more patentable than the concept of a nail is for fixing shingles on roofs
There already is a patent tax -- in reverse (Score:4, Interesting)
In other words, inventors are paying for our tax cuts already -- not the other way around. Want better examinations? Tell the government take its mitts off the fees. Right now, the fees are paying for our wars.