Protecting intellectual property still matters in a pandemic; Washington Examiner, April 21, 2020

Kevin Mooney, Washington Examiner; Protecting intellectual property still matters in a pandemic

"With businesses now under pressure as a result of COVID-19, they can hardly afford to absorb the costs associated with patent allegations that cannot be substantiated under close scrutiny. 

That’s why it’s important to preserve a trial-like procedure organized within the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office that makes it possible to review the legitimacy of patents through a streamlined, cost-effective process that avoids expensive litigation. 

Unfortunately, some lawmakers (such as Democratic Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware) are pushing legislation that would gut and dilute what is known as the inter partes review process, which provides important safeguards against patents that should not have been issued. 

A better solution would be for policymakers to provide those businesses harmed by the coronavirus with greater assurances and predictability. They can do this by defending and strengthening the inter partes review process as a tool to eliminate low-quality, wrongly granted patents that harm the economy, stifle innovation, and cost jobs. 

There’s no disputing the fact that patent examiners are overburdened. Government records show that in 2018, there were 640,000 patent applications filed, but fewer than 8,200 patent examiners available to do a thorough review. On average, patent examiners only have about 19 hours to evaluate a patent application. Under these time constraints, a handful of ill-conceived applications are approved."

Huge Job Fair at United States Patent & Trademark Office; Zebra, February 28-29, 2020

Mary Wadland, Zebra; Huge Job Fair at United States Patent & Trademark Office, February 28-29, 2020

USPTO is hiring hundreds of new examiners in 2020

"Are you ready to protect what’s next in American ingenuity? The United States Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO) is holding a job fair and hiring 100s of engineers to examine America’s patents in 2020!

Hundreds of Open Positions

The Patent Examiner Recruitment Open House event in Alexandria, VA (DC Metro Area) is designed to attract soon-to-be graduates and professionals with backgrounds in biomedical, computer, electrical, and mechanical engineering by offering actionable information about job opportunities, salary, benefits, and how to apply to hundreds of open positions currently available in Alexandria, Virginia; San Jose, California; and Detroit. Even more positions will be opening up in the agency’s Rocky Mountain regional office in Denver later in the year...

Recruiters Will Be On Site

In addition to learning about the work of patent examination and hearing directly from those who love what they do, attendees will get a chance to speak one-on-one with recruiters who will review resumes and discuss qualifications.
The Alexandria job fair will take place at the Madison Building at the USPTO headquarters in Alexandria. Day one will take place in the Global IP Academy (GIPA) and day two in the Clara Barton Auditorium. The dates are on Friday, February 28th, and Saturday, February 29th.

Walk-ins are welcome. Register now!"

How the patent office's lax standards gave Elizabeth Holmes the BS patents she needed to defraud investors and patients; Boing Boing, March 4, 2019

Cory Doctorow, Boing Boing; How the patent office's lax standards gave Elizabeth Holmes the BS patents she needed to defraud investors and patients

"Patents are only supposed to be issued for devices with "utility" -- that is, they have to actually work before you can get a patent for them. But it's been decades since the USPTO has paid meningful [sic] attention to this criterion when evaluating applications, handing out patents for imaginary "inventions" to con artists, delusional hucksters, and other "inventors" who are willing to pay the filing fees that keep the lights on at the Patent Office. And since most people only have a vague idea of the rigor used in patent examination, these patents for design fiction can be used as impressive "proof" when crooks set out to deceive their marks.

(Another real problem with these fake patents: allowing con-artists to patent "inventions" that they have no idea how to make means that when someone really does invent that gadget, the con-man can use their bogus patent to threaten and extort real inventors)."

Inventors Corner: How long does the patent process take?; Sioux Falls Business Journal via Argus Leader, July 18, 2017

Jeffrey Proehl, Sioux Falls Business Journal via Argus Leader; Inventors Corner: How long does the patent process take?

"Recent USPTO statistics suggest that this time period is becoming shorter, with the average length being about 16 months in 2016 as compared to about 28 months in 2011. Once the first communication is issued by the USPTO, things tend to move faster because of the deadlines imposed upon the applicant to respond to the communication and upon the patent examiner to act upon the applicant’s response.

The overall consideration time for a patent application also varies significantly, with the average being approximately 25 months unless the applicant needs to file a request for continued examination to obtain additional consideration by the examiner, in which case the time averages approximately 54 months."

Stupid Patent of the Month: IBM Patents Out-of-Office Email; Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), February 28, 2017

Daniel Nazer, Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF); 

Stupid Patent of the Month: IBM Patents Out-of-Office Email

"Update: March 1, 2017 Today IBM told Ars Technica that it "has decided to dedicate the patent to the public" and it filed a formal disclaimer at the Patent Office making this dedication. While this is just one patent in IBM's massive portfolio, we are glad to learn that it has declared it will not enforce its patent on out-of-office email.

On January 17, 2017, the United States Patent and Trademark Office granted IBM a patent on an out-of-office email system. Yes, really.

United States Patent No. 9,547,842 (the ’842 Patent),“Out-of-office electronic mail messaging system,” traces its history to an application filed back in 2010. That means it supposedly represents a new, non-obvious advance over technology from that time. But, as many office workers know, automated out-of-office messages were a “workplace staple” decades before IBM filed its application. The Patent Office is so out of touch that it conducted years of review of this application without ever discussing any real-world software."

The government and the courts are finally getting fed up with patent trolls — and stupid patents; Los Angeles Times, 10/11/16

Michael Hiltzik, Los Angeles Times; The government and the courts are finally getting fed up with patent trolls — and stupid patents:

"Almost nobody disputes that America’s patent system is a mess, or that it’s been that way for an unconscionably long time.

Overworked and misguided patent examiners issue patents for manifestly undeserving claims. An entire industry of patent trolls has sprung up to assemble patent rights and exploit them, not to make products or develop services, but to harass other businesses into paying them off to avoid costlier litigation.

Efforts to reform patenting tend to run into resistance from big businesses, such as the pharmaceutical industry, that long ago figured out how to game the process and are disinclined to give up their advantage. As a result, a system that was written into the U.S. Constitution to encourage invention and innovation has been turned into a “dead weight … on the nation’s economy.”"

Patent chief tells lawmakers ‘time and attendance fraud is not tolerated’; New York Times, 9/13/16

Lisa Rein, Washington Post; Patent chief tells lawmakers ‘time and attendance fraud is not tolerated’ :

"U.S. Patent and Trademark Office Director Michelle K. Lee told lawmakers Tuesday that she and her team “do not tolerate any kind of attendance abuse” and promised that employees who commit fraud are disciplined...

A 15-month analysis by Deputy Inspector General David Smith’s office of thousands of patent examiners’ turnstile badge swipes, computer logins and remote computer connections from their homes to federal systems showed consistent discrepancies between the time employees reported working and the hours they actually put in.

This time and attendance abuse cost the government at least $18.3 million, as employees who review patent applications billed the agency for almost 300,000 hours they never worked, investigators found."

Fixing why USPTO issues low-quality patents should be oversight hearing's focus; The Hill, 9/13/16

Julie Samuels, The Hill; Fixing why USPTO issues low-quality patents should be oversight hearing's focus:

"Today, the House Judiciary Committee is holding a Patent Office oversight hearing. It promises to include a headline-grabbing discussion of a recently released report showing abuses of the Patent Office’s telework program. It would be a serious missed opportunity if that conversation distracts the Committee from talking about what really matters: why the Patent Office issues low-quality patents and what can be done to fix it.

The Patent Office’s primary job is, not surprisingly to administer the patent system. This is not a small job—the Office has a staff of nearly 10,000 people and it grants approximately 350,000 patents a year. Each of these represents a 20-year monopoly, so it is crucial that the patents are of the highest quality. If they’re not, they can be quite dangerous, especially if they end up in the hands of a patent troll.

In fact, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) recently released a report finding some things we already knew, namely, that low-quality patents lead to more patent litigation and that the less time patent examiners are able to dedicate to a patent application, the more likely they are to turn that application into a patent."

Patent office workers bilked the government of millions by playing hooky, watchdog finds; Washington Post, 8/31/16

Lisa Rein, Washington Post; Patent office workers bilked the government of millions by playing hooky, watchdog finds:

"Thousands of employees who review patents for the federal government potentially cheated taxpayers out of at least $18.3 million as they billed the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office for almost 300,000 hours they never worked, according to a new investigation.

The investigation scheduled for release Wednesday by the independent watchdog for the Commerce Department, the patent office’s parent agency, determined that the real scale of fraud is probably double those numbers..."

The hours not worked could have helped the patent office whittle down a backlog it has struggled for years to shrink, the report said. The backlog stood at about 550,000 applications last spring. Reviews take 16 to 26 months to complete...

The patent office, while relatively small, plays a big role in supporting the nation’s economic development by determining whether innovators’ new products should be given sole rights to exclude competitors from making or selling their invention. The government issued 326,000 patents last year."

Got an invention? Head to your regional patent office; Marketplace.org, 11/30/15

Lauren Silverman, Marketplace.org; Got an invention? Head to your regional patent office:

"There are lots of obstacles in the patenting process – money, time, knowledge. Every year, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office receives hundreds of thousands of applications. There’s a backlog of more than 550,000 ideas that need to be sifted through.

The head of the agency – Google veteran Michelle Lee – hopes hiring more patent officers and stationing them at outposts across the country will speed up the process. The four regional offices that have opened are in Denver, Detroit, San Jose and Dallas.

The Dallas office will employ 80 patent examiners – meaning for the first time, applicants in the region won’t have to travel to the beltway if they want to meet face-to-face with their assigned examiners."