News & Analysis
Comment
Frank Eory
I agree that more than 9 out of 10 patent applications should be rejected based ...
Dave.Dykstra
It is well past time for patent reform of some sort. However, letting the big ...
Retired judge opposes Silicon Valley giants on patent reform
Rick Merritt
8/4/2010 6:57 PM EDT
In the interview, Michel said there's nothing fundamentally wrong with the 1952 Patent Act. The U.S. patent system needs significantly more funding for the patent office, not legal reform, he said
The U.S. patent system "started to come unglued" in the 1990's, Michel said. That's when the patent office became too lenient in granting broad patent claims and Congress diverted fees generated by the patent office to other uses, he added.
Since 1992, Congress diverted as much as $700 million in patent office fees to other uses, and might have taken another $200 million in the current fiscal year, Michel said. A spokeswoman for the patent office said it anticipated collecting this year about $200 million in fees above its approximately $2 billion annual budget, but legislation awaiting the president's signature would let the office keep $129 million of those fees.
Michel said the government should spend a billion dollars of the already appropriated economic stimulus funds to upgrade the computer systems and staff of the patent office. That could greatly reduce a backlog of 750,000 patents and ultimately create new jobs, he said.
The stimulus would open doors for the companies getting the patents and could generate new jobs at the patent office which lacks regional branches, he said. "There are thousands of unemployed engineers who are…experienced in the patent system as well as their scientific or engineering discipline--they’d make perfect patent examiners," he said in another segment of the interview.
"This is an extremely low cost way, revive the patent office, to stimulate technological advance and job growth, and I think it’s shockingly brainless that the country isn’t doing that," Michel said. "We spent, what, $860 or 700 billion on economic stimulus, most of which as far as I can tell didn’t do very much," he added.
Michel had high praise for the David Kappos, a former IBM patent counsel recently appointed director of the patent office. But he warned that "unless Congress is going to back him up, I don’t think we’re going to get a revived patent office and the country will suffer for decades…the patent system’s weakness is killing the economic future of this country, killing job creation, killing technological leadership," he said.
By contrast, in a final segment of the interview Michel chastised the Supreme Court for failing to set any clear definitions of what is patentable in its recent decision in the Bilski case.
|
|
|
|
|
goafrit
8/4/2010 8:17 PM EDT
The US must be re-educated on the value of patent and IPR. It is strange that the only factor that separates the developed and developed world, IPR, remains clouded in the giant USA. It is time government puts money and modernize the patent office. A patent I sent three years ago is not done. Why? They use really retired people to examine some concepts I think its pretty new they can make a clue about it. This must change
Sign in to Reply
pcsalex
8/8/2010 1:35 PM EDT
are you surprised? since I know that a coach's income is more than twenty times higher than of a computer science professors at the same university nothing surprises me,no I am not/ professor....
Sign in to Reply
Frank Eory
8/4/2010 8:47 PM EDT
About the only thing we can get widespread agreement on is that the US patent system is broken. The root causes and proposed solutions are the subjects of great disagreements, but I like this judge's idea of hiring unemployed engineers as patent examiners and funding the USPTO to do a much better job.
There are many ways the system could be reformed, but a really good start would be to get a lot more engineers to apply their individual domain expertise to reviewing new applications with a critical eye.
There also needs to be a culture change at the USPTO. The judge is right, the system started to fall apart in the 1990s when the USPTO started taking an attitude of "let them fight it out in court" and allowed just about anything to become a new patent, in many cases with broad claims that overlapped earlier patents.
Sign in to Reply
Product Engr
8/5/2010 4:26 PM EDT
In spite of our present economic climate, the US patent process must continue to balance the interest of individual, startup and public research institutions as patent reform continues through the congressional bill approval process.
The parts of the bill addressing a Post Grant Review process could result in putting some patents on a path to easy challenge, with the opposition motivated, not necessarily in trying to invalidate the patent—but simply employing procedural litigation activity.
Efforts to speed the patent review process on the pre-grant side through the utilization of a “broader peer and individual skill-level reviews” would mean involving more engineers in the process – and this utilization of additional talent means more engineers working!
Funding for "more staff in the USPTOP" is long over due!
Sign in to Reply
fundamentals
8/5/2010 5:22 PM EDT
I don't agree with the judge at all. The US patent system is broken in multiple ways. It is an archaic system more than 140 years old. In my opinion the worst deficiency comes from the attitude of the patent office. The patent office considers itself to be there to issue patents, not fight fradulent or obvious patents. Rather than study the background in detail, they give the benefit of doubt to the so-called inventor, and say "let them fight it out in courts". We need a patent office that scrutinizes every detail and history and fights the patent applicant tooth and nail to force the applicant to prove the worthiness and the novelty and the non-obviousness of the invention. It is my opinion that more than 9 out of 10 patents that goes through the US patent office should be considered invalid based on the "obvious to an expert" criterion.
This deficinecy I described above hurts everybody at different times, all companies big and small suffer from it. The only people who like it as is are the "patent trolls".
Sign in to Reply
Frank Eory
8/10/2010 1:41 PM EDT
I agree that more than 9 out of 10 patent applications should be rejected based on the "obvious to one skilled in the art" criteria. A lot more should be rejected simply for not being inventive, not advancing the state of the art.
Combine those two criteria and you probably end up with 1 out of 100 patent applications that are worthwhile and actually demonstrate innovation.
Sign in to Reply
Dr. Phil
8/5/2010 9:33 PM EDT
I gave up on patents for the most part. I went through process in 82-83..learned a lot, but came to realize just how impotent the system was. Best to be first to market with well worked out tech plan
Sign in to Reply
http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/poconoarmchairreview
8/6/2010 1:08 AM EDT
And a patent doesn't mean much without the means to enforce it. (Remember how TV patents were trod upon by big companies in the early to mid twentieth century? If you were a little patent holder, then you basically didn't have much clout.) Well, we'll all suffer if the right to benefit from one's innovations isn't well protected. Innovation will slow down.
Sign in to Reply
SallyF
8/9/2010 11:15 AM EDT
Anything Microsoft is proposing needs to be opposed or we'll be eating dirt and living in grass huts.
The patent system is broken, but the "repairs" proposed by the monopolies are not ones we would want.
I think the whole system should be scrapped completely. We would have more innovation and creativity and product choice if the patents are discontinued and the patent office is closed.
Sign in to Reply
kinnar
8/10/2010 8:13 AM EDT
You are are right,
It is surely disgusting only a few stakeholders can not make changes in the patents regulations.
The systems is beyond control due to globalization and internet.
But the time will suggest some new systems and it will come up automatically, we will have to wait for that we will have to wait for time.
Sign in to Reply
Dave.Dykstra
8/10/2010 1:20 PM EDT
It is well past time for patent reform of some sort. However, letting the big companies drive the process is probably not the way to go, but unfortunately their lobbying groups carry a lot of clout with Congress. Intellectual property needs to be protected, but the patent office in its current form does not have the capacity (and probably not the capability) to do so effectively. Hopefully the judge will have some success where others have failed in the past.
Sign in to Reply