This would be a disaster that would fundamentally unbalance the patent system -- in favor of trolls -- which would be a disaster for innovation in the US. The

This would be a disaster that would fundamentally unbalance the patent system -- in favor of trolls -- which would be a disaster for innovation in the US. The problem is, large numbers of patent applications come in and the patent office can't possibly review all of them upfront in extreme detail. Of course the great majority of them are not especially high-stakes so don't warrant extremely detailed, considered review. The administrative review process lets them focus their limited resources on high-stakes, contested patents. Anyway, it would be bizarre to give the patent office the responsibility to grant patents but not give them the ability to fix mistakes in this extremely complex domain. Bringing a judge into it makes matters worse since courts are more expensive and much less able to evaluate the validity of patents than the patent office itself. An obvious land-grab by patent trolls that would strangle tech .