On Mon, 19 Mar 2007 22:18:00 -0400, Jimmie D wrote:
"J. Mc Laughlin" wrote in message
.. .
Dear Jim (W6RMK): I have just returned from a conference where two of the
speakers were senior officials of the USPTO. Among other things, they made
clear that a large effort is being made to reduce what the PTO calls
"errors." These measures include allowed applications being scrutinized by
someone other than the examiner before being issued as a patent. While the
backlog of applications increases, the fraction of examined applications
that end up being issued as patents has precipitously decreased in the last
few years.

About 1200 new examiners are being hired each FY with a total of
somewhat over 5000 examiners. Obviously, the turnover is large with over
20% of the examiner corps being replaced each year.

In short, the USPTO has many of what they call "challenges," but they
are trying to manage the challenges. That includes implementing means for
reducing "errors."

Every time an "error" is patented, it seems to make it more difficult to
secure a legitimate patent. Your contention that the error rate is large is
not supported by facts. With a vigorous review process, in the last FY only
3.5% of approved applications were deemed to be "errors" and did not pass to
issue. I am confident that the number of errors that managed to slip by
is small indeed.

All that said, the USPTO is considering having interested parties
comment by the internet during the prosecution of applications. This
might
start with applications in business-methods and computer related
applications. This scheme would allow knowledgeable persons in the art to
tell the PTO well in advance of allowance that the art in the application is
old because of such and such. Other similar schemes are being considered.

We all realize that the Republic's balance of payments is kept from
being catastrophic because of the export of intellectual property.

The process needs improvement. It is being improved. Really bad
patents are becoming rare.

jimlux wrote in message

I am convinced that this application was intentionally filed to point
up the bogosity(?) of the system. It was the claim for improving
plant growth that convinced me.

In general, I agree with your contention that patents are granted
unless there's some clear problem (perpetual motion), with the idea
that they'll let the would-be infringer fight it out to invalidate it.

The PTO is full of good people, but grossly underfunded, and without
sufficient institutional gumption to try and fight the tide of patents
for the unpatentable and obvious.

While the overall percentage of errors is quite small even 1% or .01% would
still be a lot.Certainly enough to realise that one can not validate the
worthiness of on ides on the basis that it is patented.

Especially if that one idea does not pass The Straight Face Test.

Jonesy
--
Marvin L Jones | jonz | W3DHJ | linux
38.24N 104.55W | @ config.com | Jonesy | OS/2
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