Thanks, Art, for the sad commentary.

Walt


On Fri, 15 Oct 2004 04:39:43 GMT, "
wrote:


"Walter Maxwell" wrote in message
.. .
Art, you seem to know a lot of what's happening in the US Patent Office.
How do
you know this? Do you work there? Your 'insider-type' statements seem to
say so.

No I do not work there I am just stating how I see things in Crystal City.
After I retired I did go thru the machinations of patent requests on a
personal basis
where I did everything by myself . This allowed me to discuss things
directly with the PTO
which is something you cannot do if you hire a representitive ( attorney )
or a part of a companyBy doing things this
way you get a keener sense of what is going on and where the difference
between a parallel
circuit and a series circuit can be lost on the examiner. I have also been
invited to PTO seminars
where excuses have been made for irregular procedures because of money grabs
by the government.
I also had a meeting with a military patent attorney where he lamented about
the lessening quality
of examiners that took the easy way out of denying patent requests
presumably because of efficiency drives
and where the military attorney was forced to follow the costly appeal route
with a more than 80% reversal
success rate.
You also now have the U.S. patent office dealing with World Patents so that
even a simple "7" on a drawing
with a slash on it (European style) can throw a patent into a unknown loop
of uncertaincy.
Ofcourse if you are a patent attorney you may well see things differently as
it is your bread and butter
and you recognise hitches ahead of time by knowing the ropes thru experience
plus personal
conversations with the PTO.as to obtaining a patent per present day
aproaches which are very
different from yesteryear..
This is how I personaly view things and it would appear from the media that
many see the Patent Office
as being in a hole from which it cannot extricate itself from given the
present day litigation system.
Mac is a professional in this field and may well provide insights that
totally contradict my perceptions
if he was so inclined.
Art





If what you said is happening there is true there has been a complete turn
around in policy since I was knowledgeable in that area. You've described
what
seems to me to be fraudulent activity in the issuance of patents that have
no
value, and to use them in a court of law in an attempt for the patentee
to
obtain money is a mockery of the Patent System.

I know there is nothing I can do about the situation, but I'm shocked to
learn
about it. Apparently this is what Roy was talking about in his previous
post
that answered mine.

Walt, W2DU

On Fri, 15 Oct 2004 01:21:53 GMT, "
wrote:

Examiners get a salary of $43,000 PER YEAR which is not much in Maryland.
The majority of examiners have English as a second language and most have
Asian or
Vietnamese heritage. ( A look at the telephone directory of the
department
is quite an eye opener).
They are also on a time schedule on how many patents that they must move
along
per hour. Since the Patent Office is a "cash cow" patents or "'prior art"
have been put on computor record
so that examiners can feed in a few salient words from the application
and
then forward
the resulting computor patent matches to the new applicant so that he can
defend against the
grammar of"prior art"
.This now means that the new applicant cannot "plagerise" a pre awarded
patent grammatically.
Since the patent office does not spend time researching physics or
reviewing
workability it does
not matter if the patent works or not.
Since the Government TAKES cash from the patent office where normally it
gives money to various
government offices it is encumbent on the patent office to move along
patent requests as fast as possible
and with as little work as possible to maintain the establishment and
senior
examiners salaries,
of the latter there is very few., so that the department stays in
business
So to sum up, the patent office now review patent requests for
grammatical
duplication of "prior art"
plus ensuring that the format of any new application meets regulations
and
to ensure that said application
is placed in the correct pre-assigned grouping depending on its physics
or
intended use.
Now some may argue against the above but this is how I see patents are
dealt
with at the present time.
Art



"Walter Maxwell" wrote in message
.. .
Sorry to hear that, Roy. I was very much involved with the RCA Patent
Dept in
my early years with RCA, 1949 to 1957. During that time the US Patent
Office
examiners were smart and tough. A patent used to be worth something.

Walt

On Thu, 14 Oct 2004 10:54:49 -0700, Roy Lewallen
wrote:

Hate to break the news, Walt, but it happens very, very often. Even
years ago, when I was doing some consulting work on a patent case and
read a couple of hundred antenna patents, there was a great deal of
pseudo- and voodoo-science in issued patents. These days, it's
rampant.

My favorite example is US patent #6,025,810, "Hyper-Light-Speed
Antenna", but I'm sure even this is far from the most egregious.

Roy Lewallen, W7EL

Walter Maxwell wrote:

I f there really is an issued patent on the EH antenna, the
paragraph
above is
proof that the Patent Office examiner who approved the patent
application for
issuance was completely snowed by the applicant's patent attorney
who
wrote the
application.

This doesn't happen too often, but it does happen. Unless the patent
examiner is
extremely well versed in electromagnetic theory he could easily be
persuaded
that the EH principle is valid, while it is not.

Walt Maxwell, W2DU