Wednesday, August 29, 2007

Mike at TechDirt on patent reform

On the recent opposition by labor unions to patent reform, Mike at TechDirt writes:

The second complaint is with making it easier to contest a patent after it's been issued. This is also a no-brainer. Given how little review goes into a current patent, along with the fact that patent examiners are given incentives to approve, rather than reject -- combined with the length of time it currently takes to get a patent reviewed, the incredibly arcane rules that everyone is required to go through to contest a patent and the quick draw of some courts who refuse to wait for the patent office to review patents, it makes sense to have a better system to make sure a patent is valid. Why would anyone be opposed to improving the quality of patents... unless they hold questionable patents?

Mike is still spouting the Quillen/Webster nonsense, even after Lemley jumped ship.
Sad. Post-grant opposition is not a quality proposal. If there's a problem with the examination of patent applications, fix the examination. Don't add an inspection step. Read Deming.

1 Comments:

Blogger Unknown said...

Oh, I'm *all* for improved patent review at the first stage of the process. This bill doesn't have that in any serious way, though. Therefore, why not add that second layer. If you're going to do crap work in approving patents, then at least allow for a reasonable review system in situations when they're challenged.

3:24 AM  

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