PatentHawk whacks Quillen over continuations

In a Feb. 21 post titled Continuation Obsession , PatentHawk (Gary Odom) begins:

Cecil D. Quillen Jr. has an obsession about patent continuations and RCEs. Junior Q penned a paper on the topic back in 2002. Hal Wegner favorably reports on today's letter by Junior Q to the New York Times. Quillen: "Continuing applications claim inventions that are described in earlier filed parent applications, and thus, to a considerable extent, represent "rework" for the USPTO, since the inventions of the continuing applications were, or could have been, examined in the earlier parent applications."

IPBiz would have commented to Patent Prospector, but comments are not allowed there any more. There has been a historical connection on the continuation theme between Cecil Quillen and Harold Wegner.

From the 2008 IPBIz post
Harold Wegner takes a walk on the dark side :

If one looks at the second paper of Quillen and Webster (wherein the 97% grant figure is "qualified", 12 Fed. Cir. B.J. 35) there is text:

Numerous authors have addressed the problem of USPTO quality. referencing among other papers Harold C. Wegner, Enronesque Patent Bookkeeping: Two-For-One Continuation Double Counting and American Patent Flooding (June 14, 2002) (unpublished manuscript, on file with author at Foley & Lardner).

This paper, seemingly existing only in a footnote of Quillen and Webster, otherwise lives a Sikahema existence, apart from the "reference by imagery" of John R. Thomas.

LBE tried to obtain a copy of said "Enronesque" paper from Wegner, but none was to be had.

If all of this has a "been there, done that" flavor, note a comment to the Patent Prospector blog in 2007, back when the blog allowed comments:

Quillen and Webster also cite an unpublished manuscript, which to date I have been unable to obtain from Professor Wegner:

Harold C. Wegner, Enronesque Patent Bookkeeping: Two-For-One Continuation Double Counting and American Patent Flooding (June 14, 2002) (unpublished manuscript, on file with author at Foley & Lardner).

Turning full circle, in his July 2007 paper on SSRN, Lemley effectively says (of the 97% business): just kidding guys; the number isn’t so high after all.

A separate point about the commentary on the "No problemo" at Patent Prospector related to Michael Martin's dissembling about the "Gary Boone invented the integrated circuit business." From a comment to No Problemo:

Michael Martin states that Prof. Lemley never claimed that Gary Boone invented the integrated circuit. For reference:

Mark A. Lemley, Patenting Nanotechnology, 58 Stan. L. Rev. 601, 611-612 (2005):

The integrated circuit was itself an improvement in the field of computing, a way of building transistors (an invention discussed above) [p. 612] directly into a computer chip by using charged silicon, a semiconductor. The invention opened up not just computing but also calculators, cell phones, and a host of other portable electronic devices. But because two different inventors working independently developed the integrated circuit at about the same time (1971), the patents were put into interference. Gary Boone was ultimately declared the winner, but not until 1999, twenty-eight years after the first patent application was filed.

Guys who think Gary Boone invented the integrated circuit are totally disconnected from patent reality. Anyone who thinks the Lemley text isn't about the invention of the integrated circuit is simply disconnected from reality.

See also

Noonan on Wegner on "Besson"

PatentHawk did not mention Quillen's previous assertion of a 97% patent grant rate at the USPTO, a fanciful allegation that even Mark Lemley discarded.