The problem AISI lies with the US court system. If you have evidence of prior use, readily available in the public domain then the party suing for infringement

The problem AISI lies with the US court system. If you have evidence of prior use, readily available in the public domain then the party suing for infringement is clearly acting unlawfully (or is negligent having not done due diligence). The judge should make a full award of costs and a high award of damages against the plaintiff for persuing a clearly frivolous lawsuit .. AIUI instead the plaintiff only pays their own costs, the defendant gets lumbered with their costs(?), and the judge sends the plaintiff off to try again. Examiners at the USPTO, and other offices, are there as a filter to the courts. They just stop the courts being overwhelmed with useless, anticipated, nonsense. There are something like 300M patent documents available in databases, and patents are anticipated by any public disclosure. So you're asking that patent examiners check against every extant publication in the World, on penalty of losing their job? The examiner is like a programmer-tester, they'll catch a lot of errors, but if you scrap test/review programmers everytime a piece of software with a bug gets to a customer your costs of production will be higher than anyone would pay and your output will be near zero. You need a pragmatic approach that balances an efficient USPTO with an active and effective court system. These views are entirely my own and do not relate to my employer.