30% More Patents Issued in 2010

An anonymous reader writes "The numbers are in, and the US Patent Office granted 219,614 patents last year, which is 31% higher than in 2009 and 27% higher than any year in history. This wasn't just a marginal increase in patents being approved, but a major leap. US Commerce Secretary Gary Locke and USPTO director David Kappos have both stated that one of their goals is to reduce the backlog in patent approvals, and it appears that the way they're doing so is by approving more patents, more quickly with less scrutiny — with a large percentage of them being software patents. This may decrease the backlog at the Patent Office, but seems likely to increase the backlog in the court system as lawsuits are filed over a bunch of these new patents."

IBM

[santax]

Let's hope they get the Patent-patent and lock it away forever. People believing that there is only 1 inventor of an idea don't know shit about history. It's very very rare for 1 person to come up with something really unique. Patents, especially on obvious things like math (software) or a 1 click-to-buy (amazon) aren't a big problem today for the average citizen, but it won't be long before those lobbies will get a law that will also let them target the end-users. Mark my words. Patents as they are implemented have absolutely nothing to do with protecting design, but everything with locking out fair competition and maximizing profits for often very obvious things that at least another million people thought about but just dind't file for it, for the simple reason: duhhh obvious.

Winner: US Patent Office

[denis-The-menace]

The US Patent Office get its funding from patent applications fees. [jsonline.com]

So the question is: WHAT THE #UcK DID YOU EXPECT!