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Patents

A Day in the Life of a Patent Examiner 225

Posted by michael from the turkey-day dept.
ahdkd writes "Forbes has an older article which describes the world of patent examining: Search 500,000 Documents, Review 160,000 Pages In 20 Hours, And Then Do It All Over Again. Might help people understand the USPTO and patents in general a little better."
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A Day in the Life of a Patent Examiner More

A Day in the Life of a Patent Examiner

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  • yeah right... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 27, 2003 @01:51PM (#7577819)
    You know whats a lot easier than reading all that stuff? Simply approving the application.. then a nice nap.

  • Filing a patent... (Score:4, Informative)

    by matchlight ( 609707 ) * on Thursday November 27, 2003 @01:57PM (#7577847)
    requires the filee to do proper research. The fact that this position exists does not mean you can get an idea, file it and get it approved and it be legit. This person is only there as a last attempt at trying to weed out the duplicates.
    Given the increase in complexity for these filings, doing your own research appears to be even more important that ever. I've gone through the process with mixed success. Even when proper research is done by the person filing and the patent office, you can still miss something.
    • requires the filee (sic) to do proper research.

      Perhaps this depends on your definition of "proper research". You have to disclose the truth, and the best way to do whatever you're inventing. But you aren't legally obliged to find out if it's the best way, AFAIK.

      Several years ago when I started filing patents, I thought a full prior art search was an abligation of the filer. But my impression in more recent years that the filer is obliged to disclose relevant prior art but not to find all possible pr

    • This is a great system for anyone with lots of money. It doesn't matter if someone else has already patented something, you just file your own patent, then use it as legal justification against people who won't have the cash to mount a proper defense. Maybe it wouldn't stand up to a full attack because of previous filings, but that doesn't matter if you are careful.

  • Evidence that the system is a failure (Score:5, Insightful)

    by dada21 ( 163177 ) <adam.dada@gmail.com> on Thursday November 27, 2003 @01:58PM (#7577853) Homepage Journal
    I believe this article is yet another nail in the coffin of the patent system. It is time to rethink the patent system [mises.org]. Economist Fritz Machlup [mises.org] has proven that patents do not entice corporations to develop new products; in fact, the "short-term advantage a company derives from developing a new product and being the first to put it on the market may be incentive enough."

    Patents offer a authoritarian power to destroy competition [lewrockwell.com], increase prices, and skew the relationship between research and creation by scaring off new ideas developed on old ones.

    • Re:Evidence that the system is a failure (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      3300 patent examininers to deal with 2M incoming requests a year? I'd wager the IRS has a higher investigation to filer ratio and the IRS less than 100 years old.

      I guess we know where our priorities are.
    • also for individuals who don't have the resources to produce the products but have the ingenuity and drive to create the new products. and as such the patent system allows them to still reap the rewards of their hard work. I don't think corporations need patents either, but the patent system or something like it still needs to protect the little guy. disbanding the patent system punishes the little guy while rewarding the big corporations.

      • Re:But patents aren't only for corporations... (Score:4, Insightful)

        by dada21 ( 163177 ) <adam.dada@gmail.com> on Thursday November 27, 2003 @02:21PM (#7577949) Homepage Journal
        I wish I could agree with you in accepting that patents help the individual, but in my experience, the process of getting a patent does not seem to make the benefit worth it.

        An individual with an idea can't go very far unless they have entrepreneurship as well. If they don't have the drive to promote an idea, what good is the idea? A patent may offer them something to sell to a bigger corporation, much more can be done just by getting together with people who want to promote the idea for their own mutual gain.

        If I invented a new idea, and I couldn't distribute it, I would still have the ability to find someone else who can. Entering into a binding contract, we could create a partnership (or corporation). Until that contract is issued, I wouldn't have to explain the idea or the secrets of the idea. A non-disclosure agreement and a binding contract are really all you need to protect the idea (as is obvious from one of the links I posted in my original message).

        • An individual with an idea can't go very far unless they have entrepreneurship as well. If they don't have the drive to promote an idea, what good is the idea?

          This is a good point. There's really no reason we should reward people for good ideas. It's not like people would stop having them if they weren't rewarded. Just because mr Jones invented an ingenius new bird-feeding device, doesn't mean he should be entitled to profit from his invention if somebody else decides to manufacture it. At least, it's har

          • Ahh, but that binding contract would be essentially impossible to write were it not for the patent system.

            I hadn't thought of that. But now that I do think about it, I can see many ways that the binding contract would work.

            When I want to rent a new commercial property, I enter into a binding contract with the landlord, showing my intent. I allow many "exit clauses" from this contract, but it is binding for all other circumstances. There is no federal law protecting the landlord or myself, other than t
            • You have made some good points. I'm not entirely sure that this would have the same effect as the patent system. On the other hand, I'm not entirely sure that that would be desirable either. I'll have to sleep on it, but you have me more or less convinced that you are right...
              • I'm not trying to be right :) I'm just trying to find out what makes the most sense for me, and bang my opinions against those who agree and disagree. I love healthy debates, even Devil's advocate ones.

                I'd love to continue this "debate/sharing" session -- here on slashdot, in private e-mail, or on a forum like anti-state.com to try to get further through this topic. It isn't one I've spent much time researching, but it is definitely an important one.

                If you're interested in continuing it, drop me an e-m

          • At least, it's hard to see what the society at large can gain from [a monopoly].

            The goal of the U.S. patent system, stated in the Constitution, is "to promote the progress of science and useful arts." The rents earned from selling a patented product provides an alternative to NDAs, which may be enough of an incentive not to make the NDAs perpetual. In addition, public safety considerations demand the disclosure of the contents of some products such as drugs, and other than through monopoly rents, how ca

            • Public safety consideration? I'm sorry, but why do people keeping bringing this up???

              Will your doctor prescribe you unsafe medication? Not if he might get sued (although tort law has destroyed a lot of this). Will your insurance company pay for medication that is unsafe? Not if they might get sued (again, tort law used to cover this). Will Walgreens or CVS sell you bad drugs? Not if they might get sued. Will ABC run a drug ad during Friends if its a bad drug?

              Now, explain to me why government needs
        • but without the patent system, whats to prevent one of your "friends" from saying, ahh screw you, I'm gonna go make my own, and leave you and your hard work in the cold. with no legal recourse to get rewarded for your work. corporations are especially greedy, I think we can both agree on that, and as someone else said here, whats to stop them from saying "bugger off kid, we don't want your gadget" and then go and manufacture a million of them before you have a chance to find a corporation who will produce
          • A corporation is a group of individuals. They are never bad nor good. I own corporations. I deal with corporations. I make sure I don't deal with corporations I believe are not interested in the mutual gain of my corporation as well as theirs.

            Why would you go to a corporation you don't have familiarity with? Why wouldn't you go out and reseach past inventors' experiences with a corporation before going and making contact with them about your idea?

            Corporations are not bad. People who go into dealings

        • Re:But patents aren't only for corporations... (Score:5, Insightful)

          by HeghmoH ( 13204 ) on Thursday November 27, 2003 @03:37PM (#7578258) Homepage Journal
          Until that contract is issued, I wouldn't have to explain the idea or the secrets of the idea. A non-disclosure agreement and a binding contract are really all you need to protect the idea (as is obvious from one of the links I posted in my original message).

          This is precisely what happened before patents, and exactly why the entire patent system was invented in the first place. People would get good ideas, and try to sell them. But they can't disclose the idea, because then they don't get rewarded. They also can't find a buyer, because they can't explain the idea well enough to prospective buyers without giving the idea away. Thus, the good idea dies with the person who came up with it.

          Lots and lots of inventions were lost in exactly this way. Many people would rather die with their invention a secret than have somebody else make a fortune out of it. The key component to a patent is that it is required to publish a full specification of the invention, enough so that a knowledgeable person could build it, in return for the patent. This way, even if the inventor has a heart attack or is hit by a bus or every city where his multinational conglomerate has offices is hit by gigantic rocks from outer space, the invention is not lost.

          The simple fact of the matter is that, like copyrights, patents are fundamentally good ideas; it's the implementations that are broken. Both were originally conceived not as a way to let people make money, but as an aid to society, to promote invention and creativity. The problem now is that it's gone too far towards giving people money. Scale back the terms of copyrights and patents, examine them more thoroughly, make people pay (more) for them, etc., and you can fix the system. It's not necessary to destroy it.
        • Binding contracts are only binding on those who agree to be bound by them. So what are you going to do? have everyone who buys a product which embodies your idea enter into a contract with you? How about everyone who just sees your invention? How are you going to prevent the consumers of products, or the competitors of the entity you are contracting with from copying the invention and running with it? Faced with those odds, who in their right mind enter into a contract with you?

          If you have no way of p
    • this article is yet another nail in the coffin of the patent system

      Hopefully, but that is somewhere far off in the future. Right now we have to stop expansion of the patent system [compsoc.com], like the way the EU is considering expanding it to cover all ideas implementable through software. How would patent examiners possibly get better by increasing their workload?

      Plus it will be a lot harder to revise the patent system if it is embedded in every industry.

    • Re:Evidence that the system is a failure (Score:5, Interesting)

      by mesocyclone ( 80188 ) on Thursday November 27, 2003 @02:22PM (#7577960) Homepage Journal
      There are certainly exceptions to this rule. For example, the pharmaceutical industry, because of its huge upfront costs, often will not develop a perfectly useful drug unless it can patent it. The reason is that without patent protection, other companies will free-ride on the FDA approval process and other startup costs.

      Products which are high in intellectual content or up-front cost/risk and low in reproduction cost often need protection or they will not be developed.

      There is no doubt in my mind that the patent system, applied to software, is extremely wrong and has the potential to destroy the industry or put it into the hands of gigantic corporations who can use cross-licensing to avoid patent problems.

      But not every industry is software.

      As to an economist "proving" something... well, give me a break. An economist can throw light on things, and come up with good ideas, but the idea of them proving things is, in most cases, absurd.
      • The pharmaceutical industry possibly deserves special treatment (patents or the equivalent) simply because safety regulations require them to divulge the contents of their products, and therefore they can't benefit from trade secrets. In industries where this is not the case, it's not so obvious that patents are necessary or desirable.
        • And the alternatives might be much better. Compulsory licensing coupled with compulsory investment reimbursement may work better than current patents.

          I spend $10 bn to develop a new drug and plan to sell 100 mln packages for $200 each. If you want to join the fun and sell your own improved version, pay me about $50-100 for each package you sell. Let's also limit the total amount of royalty payment and time period.
        • Why does it and not the chip fabrication business? Whats the incentive to produce smaller fabs when the competion can just use your research?

          James
          • Chip makers do not have to go through the same FDA disclosure process that pharmaceuticals go through. By the time FDA approval is granted, the contents of the drug are public knowledge as is the process of synthesizing the drug. However, if Intel had to get FDA approval, we'd be typing all of this on Pentium Pro 233s.
        • Trade secrets wouldn't work well for drugs even if there weren't disclosure requirements--even if they weren't required to disclose the ingredient list, the actual drugs themselves would provide a pretty strong clue. This problem is common to many forms of technology, reverse engineering isn't necessarily difficult.
      • First, you are correct on the "proving" idea -- I will refrain from using the word "prove" along with "economist." I should have said "proved to me" instead.

        As for the pharmaceutical industry, it should be known at part of the high up-front cost is FDA regulation. I believe the FDA is unconstitutional, and could be better created as a free market Underwriter's Laboratory type corporation. Target won't sell a lamp unless its UL tested. Why would drugs be any different?

        If a company creates a drug, tests
        • I believe the FDA ...could be better created as a free market Underwriter's Laboratory type corporation. Target won't sell a lamp unless its UL tested. Why would drugs be any different?

          You're crazy if you think drugs are like lamps.People go into hock buying the latest snake-oil-cure-all for any one of a number of ailments. Do you really want drug companies to even be able to market drugs whose safety and efficacy has not been ascertained ?
          • You're crazy if you think drugs are like lamps.People go into hock buying the latest snake-oil-cure-all for any one of a number of ailments. Do you really want drug companies to even be able to market drugs whose safety and efficacy has not been ascertained ?

            As much as I hate to agree with this point, I sort of agree with it. People have become far too complacent and dependent on others to do their thinking for them. It may make some people feel better to say "let all the stupid people die", but this

        • I think the FDA may be the wrong way to do things too. Too many people have been denied lifesaving drugs by the FDA, and too many drugs have not been developed because their lack of patentability makes it unprofitable to go through the FDA hurdles.

          However, even without the FDA, you want extensive clinical testing. A UL or an FDA with merely advisory powers (I like the idea of having both) would still demand that testing before giving a blessing to the product. Thus there is still a massive upfront cost and
      • For example, the pharmaceutical industry, because of its huge upfront costs, often will not develop a perfectly useful drug unless it can patent it. The reason is that without patent protection, other companies will free-ride on the FDA approval process and other startup costs.

        And do you think they would continue this policy if the patent system was abandoned?

        • Yes, without patents the problem of unpatentable drugs would continue, and in fact would get much, much worse. Basically, the pharmaceutical industry would be destroyed and no new drugs would come to market.

          The policy is a simple business decision involving weighing the costs against the profits, the latter being dramatically reduced by competition which does not have the same upfront costs.

          In other words, someone has to do the testing. Without the testing, the drug cannot (or should not) be sold. Whoever
      • Without patents companies won't be so inclined to spend large amounts of money upfront for medicine, but it would still work. For one thing, they should be forced to keep the research open that they are doing. This way the scientists and various others working on these drugs will have all the information they need available to them and it will be a race by them all to be the first to discover and create. Second, the NSF (National Science Foundation) and various other groups exist for the specific purpose
        • I think you are missing the point...

          Removing patent protection and forcing the research opens means that your are removing all intellectual property protection.

          How are you going to pay for the testing? NSF, etc do not do the development and mass clinical testing needed to determine safety, efficacy and cilnical characteristics of medications. They do more basic research, and the private firms (who also do basic research, BTW) then assume all of the risk.

          I have seen no proposals that solve this problem ot
          • Everything would run the same. I only mean that those projects which companies wish not to pursue due to large investment costs would be done anyway by intellectuals in the community that feel the research is important enough to warrant some federal money for the research. The only difference here is that companies would not be relying on having complete ownership of some specific drug, but by continually providing good service, advancing science, competing as opposed to locking in customers with a paten
            • Creating software is largely the engineering of computer programs. Very little of it involves research. Developing pharmaceuticals relies on vast amounts of research, ranging from work done by NIH to drug prospecting in natural plants to combinatorial chemistry to other stuff.

              But the problem that you miss, and that is crucial, is that it takes a huge expense to develop the drugs for market, AFTER the NIH funded research. This is because of the costs of research borne by the companies (on top of publicly fu
      • the pharmaceutical industry, because of its huge upfront costs, often will not develop a perfectly useful drug unless it can patent it

        I might have more sympathy for this view were it not for the fact that pharmcos spend twice as much on advertising as they do on R&D

        • Pharmos are in the business to make money. They often do well at it. But to make money in a competitive industry, they also have to sell their product. Doctors are overwhelmed with information, and are very conservative. Pharmaceutical company reps cost a lot of money because they themselves have to know a lot about the drugs they sell and often have substantial education. Without those expenses, the drugs wouldn't get into use. The newer practice of advertising direct to consumers may also benefit consumer

          • Re:That old chestnut again (Score:4, Informative)

            by Vainglorious Coward ( 267452 ) on Friday November 28, 2003 @01:14PM (#7582682) Journal

            Nicely dodging my point that it's specious to argue that pharmcos need special protection because of the R&D costs, when in fact they are not risking huge amounts of money upfront. In fact they are trifling amounts, compared to other spending. See, for example, the figures in the report produced by Families USA [familiesusa.org] which shows that Merck spent 6% of revenues on R&D, but spent 15% on marketing. The figures for Pfizer are 15% and 39%. The fact is that the pharmcos are one of the most powerful lobby groups in Washington and get lots of, ahem, "special consideration" that I don't think they deserve.

            The newer practice of advertising direct to consumers may also benefit consumers by advising them of choices their doctors may not be paying attention to.

            Are you for real?!? I guess, given your comments, you or your dad must work for a pharmco, but even so, pretending that dtca benefits consumers is simply risible.

      • There are certainly exceptions to this rule. For example, the pharmaceutical industry, because of its huge upfront costs, often will not develop a perfectly useful drug unless it can patent it.

        I remember a conference in which a guy from a lab told us that they did not look for certain efficient molecules because they were partly based on mecanisms patented by other labs. Thus, there are good molecules out there that could cure serious disease, but because they involve several mecanisms patented by differ
        • This is certainly true. And the reason is that it takes a huge investment, after the discovery of the drug, before it can be sold. If that investment is public domain (as it would be on an unpatented drug), it usually isn't worth it.

          In those cases, perhaps there should be other governmental mechanisms to encourage the investment (like there is with orphan drugs), but too often the government screws these things up and people (like pharmcos) game them.

    • Re:Evidence that the system is a failure (Score:5, Interesting)

      by bug-eyed monster ( 89534 ) <bem03@NOsPam.canada.com> on Thursday November 27, 2003 @02:41PM (#7578045)
      It's quite misguided to say the patent system as a whole is no good. Patents work well in some situations but not others. You can't cite a couple of bad cases from the software industry and conculde that the patent system is broken altogether.

      E.g. pharmaceutical companies need to do a lot of research before creating new useful medicine. Research costs money and they can't make it back within just a couple of months of being first-to-market. They get a few years to control the market, make a profit, and move on. Another example, if you invent a better shovel, it'll be copied within a month easy, and there is no way you can make a profit from being first-to-market because people don't buy shovels every month. You need a patent of a few years to let you make some decent profit.

      Patents work well for some industries but not others. There is also the way patents are used. Dolby Labs made a great use of their invention in noise reduction system. Nobody boycotts Dolby Labs, in fact everybody welcomes them, even though their patent and licensing increased the price of audio-visual equipment.

      Dolby invented something, made it available to the public while making an honest profit and everybody's happy. Contrast that to the company who pops up with some vague patent and issues C&Ds or ridiculous invoices to the world, years after the public adoption of the patented system. We need to address and fix the latter stunts, not drop the entire patent system.
    • Lots of Big Ideas in your post: "Economic proof", "authoritarian power", and of course the "anarchocapitalist" in your sig.

      Now, there's a danger with Big Ideas -- they make it hard to deal with the practical reality. You can argue all you want that the patent system, and other IP concepts, have outlived their usefulness. You might even convince a lot of people that you're right. (I, for one, am half-convinced already, and I haven't even looked at your links.) But that's not very useful. Big Ideas do nothi

  • Do It Right (Score:5, Insightful)

    by SpamJunkie ( 557825 ) on Thursday November 27, 2003 @01:59PM (#7577860)
    My feelings on this are simple: do it right or don't do it at all.

    If the government can't create a system that approves patents corrently then there should be no approval process at all, and thus, no patents at all. It would be better to let the market protect innovators, however weak the protection, than to let a flawed patent office allow innovators to be harmed by those that would exploit the flaws.
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • My feelings on this are simple: do it right or don't do it at all.

      Very true. Another way of saying the same thing is that difficulty is no excuse for incompetence. If something is hard then it can take a long time to do it properly, and if that results in collosal patent processing times then either get more staff or accept the long waiting lists for approval, which might even be a good thing.

      In any event, the current state of patents is nothing short of a catastrophe in the world of ideas, and the bl
      • My feelings on this are simple: do it right or don't do it at all.

        Very true.

        For perfectionists, sometimes doing it right means not doing it at all. :)

        "Perfection is the enemy of progress", and "A good plan today is better than a perfect plan tomorrow."

        --

  • If they are overworked (Score:4, Insightful)

    by SirGeek ( 120712 ) <sirgeek-slashdot.mrsucko@org> on Thursday November 27, 2003 @02:01PM (#7577866) Homepage
    They should ban together and refuse. That is what they need to do to protect the system. Yes, I understand that it is difficult but if they don't bitch all the way up the line, then who will ?

    I mean, Ok. They get fired for saying that they can't do their jobs. They would be able to go to almost ANY news outlet and get their story printed . Patent Office fires worker for complaining about unfair practices . That would not look good for the USPTO.

    I also find the article "lacking" in explaining HOW they search let alone WHERE they search.

    If the internet isn't used , Why don't they mention it - We don't bother to check google if the idea exists already. We only look if it is already patented, not if it already exists in the public domain.

    • If the internet isn't used

      IANAL (so what else is new...) but,

      They cannot use the internet. Simply put, the definition of a "published idea" is quite murky. If I do a search on Google, then the search text is transmitted across the internet. Google then returns the results in the form of a Web page, which includes the search text. I am now looking at my idea in a Web page.

      You can also get a service which displays ongoing search requests (I can't find it right now). So there is your search request display
      • You can also get a service which displays ongoing search requests (I can't find it right now). So there is your search request displayed for the world to see.

        Its called Referer and is a variable transfered from the http client to the server. They could of course change, say Mozilla, to not upload the uri to the refering site when conducting these searches.

    • Re:If they are overworked (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Xzzy ( 111297 ) <sether@@@tru7h...org> on Thursday November 27, 2003 @02:30PM (#7577998) Homepage
      > They should ban together and refuse. That is what they need to do to protect the system. Yes, I
      > understand that it is difficult but if they don't bitch all the way up the line, then who will ?

      You have no idea how government entities function, do you? :)

      10% of the people (maybe even less) working at a site will actually be good workers who give a fig about their job and how well things are run. The issue is that this segment is never in a position to institute change. These people don't stick around long, they become cynical quite fast and generally quit and return to jobs in the private sector (which often have just as fucked up management systems, but in completely different ways).

      Another 10% of the people are the ones who can make decisions, but have absolutely no background to make effective decisions (they got where they are mostly via seniority). They instead opt to spend their days in endless meetings hoping someone else makes a decision so they can go back to "fine tuning" the organization chart.

      The remaining 80% is dead wood. Completely lazy, useless fatasses who know it's damn near impossible to fire a government employee and only show up to ensure they keep getting a paycheck. Their sole desire is to avoid rocking the boat, in effort to avoid losing their gravy train. Most of them have held government jobs for so long no one even notices how bloody useless they are, except for the original 10% who are powerless to do anything about it.

      Point being, a majority of the people working for the USPTO plain out doesn't give a shit. They will NEVER "strike" or "take it to the press", soley because it means they would actually have to scrape their butts out of their chair and rub some of their brain cells together.

      • The ratios apply everywhere [plastic.com].

      • wow you totally dont have a clue (Score:2, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward
        I work as a patent examiner. We work on a quota system, meaning we have a certain number of hours allocated towards each case, it is totally dependant on each technology as to how long you have allocated towards each case, but on average it is about 20 hours, that is 20 hours to read the case, search the case, and write the case, and then respond and subsequently preform any additional required search after an attorney ammends the case. That is not enough time to give an exhaustive search, but after a certa
    • For those of you who weren't around in the early 1980's, search for PATCO [google.com], which was the air traffic controllers' union until it tried to strike in 1981.

      PATCO had a union in place and had some legitimate grievances that included potential public safety hazards. When their contract talks with the FAA broke down, they tried to strike (illegally, it must be added). The Government swooped down on them and basically fired them all.

      The parallel to USPTO is clearer in accounts like this one [virginia.edu], which makes the po

  • Shades of 'Yes Minister' (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Space cowboy ( 13680 ) on Thursday November 27, 2003 @02:04PM (#7577882) Journal
    There was a British TV comedy about the manipulation of government by the civil service (and vice versa, sometimes :-) called 'Yes Minister', and 'Yes Prime Minister'. One of the favourite tactics of "Sir Humphrey" (civil service mandarin) is to deluge the minister with reams of information, to make it completely impossible to make a decision by a given deadline.

    It strikes me that when a patent is 160,000 pages long, someone is trying the same tactic. Perhaps there ought to be a limit on the size of patent applications. After all, if it is sufficiently revolutionary to be awarded protection from its possible competition, it ought to be easily stated and understood. Let anything else just compete.

    I suspect some would lose out, but I also think the patent system overall would win. The original patent applications were on a single sheet of paper....

    Simon.
    • A 160,000 page Biotech patent will consist of around 100 pages of description, probably 100 pages of claims (or less) and 159,800 pages of DNA sequences.

      Ugh.

      troc
      • A 160,000 page Biotech patent will consist of around 100 pages of description, probably 100 pages of claims (or less) and 159,800 pages of DNA sequences.

        The largest constructs used in genetic engineering are usually no more than a few megabases in length; large bits of DNA tend to be rather awkward to manipulate. At, say, two thousand bases (each one of A, C, G, or T) per page, one megabase spans five hundred pages.

        I suppose if one were to try to patent the genome of an entire organism, including all o

  • Prior Art (Score:4, Funny)

    by jolyonr ( 560227 ) on Thursday November 27, 2003 @02:09PM (#7577898) Homepage
    It must be hard to go through hundreds of thousands of documents looking for prior art. look how hard it is sometimes for the slashdot editors to read through a couple of plages to look for previous posts of the same story :) (and yes, I know this story is ok)

  • The essence of how patents are used (Score:3, Insightful)

    by ZorroXXX ( 610877 ) <[hlovdal] [at] [gmail.com]> on Thursday November 27, 2003 @02:10PM (#7577903)
    From the article: ... says Nolan. "They want to see how far they can go, and almost anything I give them is going to limit what somebody else can do."

    This is exactly what is wrong with the (current) patent system. It is supposed to promote innovation but instead it is used as a tool to put sticks in the wheels of the competitors.

    • ...the (current) patent system ... is used as a tool to put sticks in the wheels of the competitors.

      It's not a bug - it's a feature. Businesses want monopolies, so we set up this type of deal called a "patent" that lets them have one in return for financing and disclosing an invention.

      The problem is that we're in many cases showing really poor tradesmanship: We give away monopolies for inventions that we would have had for free anyway. (Or we give excessively broad monopolies for barely non-trivial i

  • Rich and powerful interests want bad patents. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Futurepower(R) ( 558542 ) on Thursday November 27, 2003 @02:12PM (#7577916) Homepage

    Rich and powerful interests don't want good patent examinations. They want the control that comes from having spurious patent approvals, which must be contested in expensive court proceedings. Those interests make sure that the U.S. patent and trademark office is under-funded. Twenty years ago there was better funding.

    This is just one more example of the rapidly widening corruption in the U.S. government. Another example: Vice-president Dick Cheney, when he worked in the defense department, had the rules changed about procuring services during times of war. Then, as Vice-president, he pushed for a war with Iraq, and made sure the services went to his former company, Halliburton.

    As David Letterman said, when you write a check for your part of the $87 billion that will be used to "rebuild" Iraq (after bombing it), remember that there are two Ls in Halliburton.
  • patent examining wasn't among the list of worst jobs [slashdot.org] right beside fart-sniffer and barnyard masturbator?

  • A day in the life of a patent examiner (Score:4, Funny)

    by Dark Lord Seth ( 584963 ) on Thursday November 27, 2003 @02:14PM (#7577923) Journal
    09:00: Get up, sniff glue
    09:30: Read newspaper, lick a poisonous toad
    10:30: Arrive at work, get high on cough syrup
    10:31: Review patents
    17:30: Go home, yell at imaginairy wife, pass out on a skittle frenzy
    • Eight Hours, And There's Nothing Going On:

      get coffee and read paper:
      1 hour
      read and understand ONE application:
      1/2 hour (skim submitter's corporation marks, lookup stock ticker on the NASDAQ)
      yak with fellow examiner about last night's ballgame or movie:
      1 hour
      search for prior art:
      0 (they applied for it, so it must be an innovation, duh)
      evaluate patentability:
      0 (they applied for it, so it must be patentable, duh)
      communicate with the applicant:
      0 (application+fee = all the USPTO needs)
      work o

  • They don't like it? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Rogerborg ( 306625 ) on Thursday November 27, 2003 @02:18PM (#7577940) Homepage
    Then they can resign. $45K starting salary rising to $90K for a 4 day week? Fuck them. Let's subcontract the whole lot to India.

  • If doing a good job's impossible, why bother? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Junior J. Junior III ( 192702 ) on Thursday November 27, 2003 @02:21PM (#7577953) Homepage
    So, if you know you can't possibly do a good job in evaluating that volume of patents, why not slow things down to a crawl, and do stuff the right way? Sure, we'd still be looking at the merits of the application for the patent for the transistor, but isn't that better than no-look rubber stamping of bullshit like one-click shopping?

  • Acacia and streaming video/audio patent (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Syncalot ( 666263 ) on Thursday November 27, 2003 @02:27PM (#7577984) Homepage
    over the last year there has been a company claiming a patent on streaming video/audio, (ie not live) but anything recorded that gets d/l and then is played back on a computer. I would say that 3/4 of the internet does that. They are now targeting the adult industry first and sending out letters to individuals demanding $1500 and up from each webmaster who has video on their site. Some of you might not care and say well its the adult industry let them get screwed, but this is a more serious issue for everyone who uses video/audio on their web site and will eventually get hit by this company for voilation of their patent. now this may see really silly to alot of people having a patent on this but they are out there sending letters and getting some people to sign. Here is a PR released by a site called fight the patent which is helping people who get letters fight this. http://www.fighthepatent.com/v2/PR-1117.html I cant seem to find a link anymore to a scanned in letter, but its very generic, and lits the persons name with some paragraphs stating their claim on their patents, how ever no web sites are mentioned in the letter and their demand is $1500+ and you need to have this in by nov 30th. this goes even further. if your a website owner and LINK to a site that has video/audio on it and make money off of sending users to that site you are also in violation.. now come on fokes this is really out of control it seems their patent is based upon an idea of sending data from one location to the next then playing back that video/audio content. There is no actual software technology they developed that people are using with out paying. just another reason these patent guys really need to look at older patents and start really removing them. Hell I saw a special on a father who patent his girl swining from left to right instead of front to back.. its all about prior art and acacia patent lies in 1990. so if there is anything or any proof of video/audio d/l, streaming this patent can be changed. sorry for the rant, its just a few of my friends are in this situation and i thought maybe a voice for them would help.. just search google news for the word Acacia to find out more.

    • Re:Acacia and streaming video/audio patent (Score:4, Funny)

      by Tablizer ( 95088 ) on Thursday November 27, 2003 @03:26PM (#7578230) Journal
      over the last year there has been a company claiming a patent on streaming video/audio, (ie not live) but anything recorded that gets d/l and then is played back on a computer......Some of you might not care and say well its the adult industry let them get screwed

      All the porn industry has to do is threaten to withold any porn from ever being seen by the patent threatening company's employees. "You will never see another naked woman besides your wife again if you press this patent on us."

      A threat like that has to work.
  • Someone just wants to show that USPTO which should be public service can be milking cow.

    I don't remember what is the cost of filling the patent, but I think that it was somewhere around $20k. So let the examiner check ten aplications a year and earn half the money from application fee.

    If constant costs are bigger, let him earn a quarter of this money.

    Sure, you would have to hire lots of people, but USPTO would still be on black and the patent system would work better -- win-win situation.

    Apparently some
    • The USPTO IS in the black. Has been for years. It is one of the few agencies that makes money for the gov't. The problem is that the funds incoming to the USPTO from the public go into the general government fund, not in the USPTO's fund. Then, every year, the USPTO has to grovel to congress for money. It usually gets less than it asks for and ALWAYS gets less than it generates (its called diversion and many think it amounts to an unconbstitutional tax on inventors).

      Also, the USPTO actually looses mo
  • Just think how much good could these people do to the industry by providing valuable advice to researchers and developers about which venues of research to pursue, what their colleagues are doing, which ideas lead to dead-ends, etc. Instead they waste their time granting and filing patents which no longer seem to benefit the progress of society that much...

  • Pretty straightforward (Score:3, Funny)

    by Timesprout ( 579035 ) on Thursday November 27, 2003 @02:34PM (#7578009)
    8:00 Arrive in office
    8:05 Begin daily caffeine overdose
    8:10 Check email
    8:20 Check todays work schedule
    8:30 Retrieve documentation for todays application
    9:00 Begin carefully reading application, constantly referring to extensive memory of patents already extant that may cover this application
    9:05 God this is boring
    9:06 Begin fantasizing about a combination of Halle Berry and strawberry icecream
    9:09 Mental decision: Approve patent
    9:09:03 Resume Halle fantasy
    ...
    4:55 Inform supervisisor by email patent is accepted as there is no evidence that Halle Berry has ever been used in this manner before.
    4:56 Send additional mail to supervisor, correcting self by replacing Halle with object of patent

  • Hype job? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Quixote ( 154172 ) on Thursday November 27, 2003 @02:34PM (#7578012) Homepage Journal
    I smell a hype-job.

    Here's a quote:
    When a patent is first filed, the key hurdles are novelty and obviousness; i.e., does this idea really represent something new, and is it informed by a particular creativity? Eighty percent of patent applications are rejected for failing to meet those first hurdles.

    Someone please tell the writer about some [corante.com] of the "novel" [164.195.100.11] patents issued by the USPTO.

  • Distributed patent processing (Score:3, Interesting)

    by satyap ( 670137 ) on Thursday November 27, 2003 @02:46PM (#7578066)
    Distributed patent processing -- have a bunch of (volunteer) people do the legwork etc. The patent officers can do the final check. It should help a little.
  • Forbes has an older article which describes

    One question, though: we know it's old, but was it also posted here too ? If so, it sounds like this article is perfect for Slashdot.

  • Maybe someone should... (Score:4, Funny)

    by thewils ( 463314 ) on Thursday November 27, 2003 @02:59PM (#7578131) Journal
    ...patent a new method of submitting patents to the patent office.

  • Using Patents (Score:4, Interesting)

    by mindhaze ( 40009 ) on Thursday November 27, 2003 @03:04PM (#7578155) Homepage Journal
    Here's a question for the opinionated Slashdot crowd...

    Is it legit, ie: won't have me tied up with lawsuits for the next several years, to use patented technology for personal applications?

    Think, perhaps, of a power-generation system that would be suitable for a small hobby farm. If I took the patent, built it, and used it on my own land, but did not sell it, am I violating the patent?

    • Re:Using Patents (Score:3, Informative)

      by scrytch ( 9198 )
      Think, perhaps, of a power-generation system that would be suitable for a small hobby farm. If I took the patent, built it, and used it on my own land, but did not sell it, am I violating the patent?

      From my interpretation of the below, I'd say definitely yes, you're violating the patent. Especially if you used the patent application itself to develop it.

      From http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/doc/general/ i ndex.html#infringement

      Infringement of a patent consists of the unauthorized making, using, off

    • The short answer is "yes", you'd be infringing.

      But there's a much more complicated, long answer of "no" to your question, dealing with the sheer reality of Human needs.

      You didn't mention if the power-generation system was NOT for sale if you wanted one. If it's a patented system, and is NOT available, then go ahead and make one ... I would. It is immoral to sit on a patent without providing the product or service that the patent is providing monopoly protection for.

      You didn't mention if the power

  • Maybe we should make challenges cheaper (Score:3, Insightful)

    by MythoBeast ( 54294 ) on Thursday November 27, 2003 @03:48PM (#7578305) Homepage Journal
    It does seem that the process for creating patents is largely incapable of determining the validity of patents. It works more like a sanity check, and barely that.

    Considering this, it would make more sense if it were cheaper for external entities to challenge patents after they were created. As things stand, it takes thousands, or sometimes tens of thousands of dollars to challenge even the most obviously flawed patent.

    We could, for instance, create a standard reveiw process where an individual presents evidence of patent conflict or prior art. Since the claimant is doing much of the research in advance, the cost should be considerably less.
    • You make a valid point. But like most things in a capitalistic system, our patent examination system is a compromise based on the scarcity of resources.

      In a perfect world, the patent office would have a million examiners and they would all have the time and resources to examine every application in infinitesimal detail to insure no bad patents are issued. But this is not a perfect world and we do not have the resources to hire a million patent examiners and let them take as long as they want.

      So, in our

  • It's almost too simple... (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    My favourite quote, in light of the Microsoft Anti-Trust settlement, has to be the following:

    "Esther Kepplinger, deputy commissioner for patent operations and self-described "supervisor of supervisors of supervisors," was one of fewer than ten examiners doing biotech patents 30 years ago; she has overseen a fifty-fold increase in demand and specialization. Still, she says "when you're experienced at this, you can make decisions whether you know the art or not," a process she compares with a court's ruling

  • 190,000 patents granted a year? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by rollingcalf ( 605357 ) on Thursday November 27, 2003 @07:38PM (#7579218)
    That is a major symptom of the problem. Obtaining a patent should be just a notch below the level of rare and high achievement required to be an Olympic medalist, discover a new galaxy, or win a Nobel Prize. For crying out loud, you are saying that none of the other six billion people on earth did what you claim to do, and that no one else will naturally create that when faced with a similar problem in the course of their work. That is an extremely strong statement against the rest of the human race, and IMHO there aren't enough inventions that rise to the standard of novelty to truly deserve 190,000 patents in a decade.

    If the USPTO were more strict with upholding a high standards for patents, the vast majority of applications that are submitted today would get thrown out even before commencing a prior art search. Eventually, the flood of applications would be reduced to a small number of worthy contenders, which would be a much more manageable load.

    Unfortunately, the policies of the USPTO put the burden of proof on the patent examiner. They have to grant the patent unless they can find prior art or make a strong case why the creation is obvious. But the burden should be on the applicant to impress the examiners with the device's originality and utility, because a patent granted in error places a very high burden on the rest of society. The benefit of the doubt should be given to the public at large, not the patent applicant. Until that policy is changed they will be flooded with frivolous applications, and be pressured to grant patents for most of them, because it is so much more difficult to deny them.

    "It was never the object of those laws to grant a monopoly for every trifling device, every shadow of a shade of an idea, which would naturally and spontaneously occur to any skilled mechanic or operator in the ordinary progress of manufactures. Such an indiscriminate creation of exclusive privileges tends rater to obstruct than to stimulate invention. It creates a class of speculative schemers who make it their business to watch the advancing wave of improvement, and gather its foam in the form of patented monopolies, which enable them to lay a heavy tax upon the industry of the country, without contributing anything to the real advancement of the arts. It embarrasses the honest pursuit of business with fears and apprehensions of concealed liens and unknown liabilities lawsuits and vexatious accountings for profits made in good faith."
    -- US Supreme Court (Atlantic Works v. Brady, 1017 U.S. 192, 200 (1882)).

  • Patent Examination (Score:2, Interesting)

    by zungu ( 588387 )
    Many people think patents are evil. The system of Patents, like any other system, is played with certain rules. Obtaining a patent does not mean that you have a ultra-strong right. Any issued patent is open to various challenges like reexamination and validty. When a patent owner sues another party for infringment, the infringer typically challenger the validity of the patent on all possible grounds. During such challenge a wide search of art, which is much more specific and comrehensive than that carr
  • What we need are more examiners who read fewer applications in a narrower field of expertise with which they are conversant. Obtain 10,000 or more citizens who have demonstrable mastery of various fields. Send them electronic applications so they may search the relevant electronic databases and sources that they will already be using as part of their day job. Pay them per piece. Network them so if the application goes beyond the bound of their skills, they can call in help as needed.

    I know that if I were t
  • This explains why patents outside the area of expertise of the examiner tend to be done poorly. It doesn't justify the doing of them.

    Considering the social costs of poorly done patents, and actually of even properly done patents...though that's less significant (there's a genuine up side), I don't see the justification for doing them at all. Of course, if I look and see who generally benefits, I see why they are kept in place. Patent pools allow companies that currently dominate in an area to maintain d

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