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> Only if the examiner issues a final rejection will the invention be reviewed by a board of appeals comprising senior examiners. Yes, that's quite backwards,

> Only if the examiner issues a final rejection will the invention be reviewed by a board of appeals comprising senior examiners. Yes, that's quite backwards, isn't it? Granted patents should be reviewed more carefully than rejections. Where the PhD system is built to minimize false positives, the patent system is built to minimize false negatives. Here's how I've seen it put in the past. A patent is a deal the public makes with an inventor: the inventor gets a temporary monopoly in exchange for disclosing how the invention works. The problem we have is that no one in the system — neither the PTO nor the courts — is specifically responsible for representing the public's interest, by making sure that the information being disclosed is valuable enough to deserve the monopoly.

dctoedt 8y ago
> no one in the system — neither the PTO nor the courts — is specifically responsible for representing the public's interest, by making sure that the information being disclosed is valuable enough to deserve the monopoly. By law, that's the job of the USPTO. The PTO routinely rejects patent applications if the examiner thinks that the claimed subject matter wasn't novel or would have been obvious at the time the invention was made. Most rejections stick (I would guess), but sometimes examiners get worn down by patent attorneys. The problem was famously summarized nearly a century ago by the legendary federal judge Learned Hand, who said that "... the antlike persistency of solicitors has overcome, and I suppose will continue to overcome, the patience of examiners, and there is apparently always but one outcome." [0] [0] Lyon v. Boh, 1 F.2d 48, 50 (S.D.N.Y.1924) (L. Hand, J.), at https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=9696597566965196877 https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=969659756696519... , rev'd on other grounds, 10 F. 2d 30 (2d Cir. 1926).

dctoedt 8y ago

> no one in the system — neither the PTO nor the courts — is specifically responsible for representing the public's interest, by making sure that the information being disclosed is valuable enough to deserve the monopoly. By law, that's the job of the USPTO. The PTO routinely rejects patent applications if the examiner thinks that the claimed subject matter wasn't novel or would have been obvious at the time the invention was made. Most rejections stick (I would guess), but sometimes examiners get worn down by patent attorneys. The problem was famously summarized nearly a century ago by the legendary federal judge Learned Hand, who said that "... the antlike persistency of solicitors has overcome, and I suppose will continue to overcome, the patience of examiners, and there is apparently always but one outcome." [0] [0] Lyon v. Boh, 1 F.2d 48, 50 (S.D.N.Y.1924) (L. Hand, J.), at https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=9696597566965196877 https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=969659756696519... , rev'd on other grounds, 10 F. 2d 30 (2d Cir. 1926).