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The USPTO uses a lot of automation, but frequently not where they should. Note: I am a current USPTO patent examiner, and this is my opinion, not that of the U
by _ggwa 4y ago
The USPTO uses a lot of automation, but frequently not where they should.
Note: I am a current USPTO patent examiner, and this is my opinion, not that of the USPTO or US govt.
The USPTO apparently has two contractors to classify patent documents. I've heard that some sort of AI system is used for classification, in combination with a lot of poorly paid contractors. In my experience, the classification is so frequently wrong that this is clearly not working. It might seem okay to upper management, who never has to actually deal with the classification being inaccurate. But examiners aren't happy with it.
Many people are calling for AI search. The new head of the USPTO mentioned it during a recent all-hands meeting. Unfortunately, the people who propose AI search don't seem to realize that 1. the USPTO has at least 5 AI search tools at their disposal (PLUS, More Like This, Dialog's similarity search, IP.com's similarity search, and Google Patents similar documents) and 2. none of these AI search tools work that well. In my experience, most of the time these tools don't return useful documents. (I still try them for every application as there's little downside.) The documents are usually close but it's rare that I'll actually use one of these documents in a prior art rejection. AI search sounds good to people who have never searched for patents and particularly have never used the existing AI search tools. AI search technology probably won't be good for a decade or more.
In contrast, tools to analyze patent claims for various problems (basically, linters) have been available for around 30 years and can be quite useful in my opinion. But the USPTO has no such tool available to examiners, and analysis under 112(b), etc., is almost always done manually. I wrote my own tool, which I run on my USPTO computer on a regular basis.
There are a huge number of opportunities to streamline USPTO operations with automation. Why are IDS forms not computer-readable? Why is so much information not auto-filled? Why do I have to fill out "bib data sheets" for every application? Why do I have to manually upload my search history when the system could easily automatically grab it for me? Etc.
And automation isn't enough. There should be more data validation in the process, as a lot of problems can be automatically caught at the time of filing or when I post an office action. That's when fixing these problems would be easiest.
- pbhjpbhj 4y agoThank you for an enlightening and informative post.
- turtleyacht 4y ago> wrote my own tool, which I run on my [work] computer Could you elaborate on this? I'm still on the fence about even having independent dotfiles in a separate repo. Perhaps it is different because it's governmental work, therefore for the public good? If I may ask yet another question: if your tools make you more efficient, does that impact perception of other examiners' "KPI metrics?" Automation is a sensitive topic at the best of times, so just trying to learn some context from different fields. Thank-you.
- _ggwa 4y ago> Could you elaborate on this? I'm still on the fence about even having independent dotfiles in a separate repo. I'm not quite sure what specifically you want me to elaborate on, but I'll write about how similar my work and personal computers are. My USPTO computer is almost entirely independent of my personal computer. I run Linux on my personal computer, and the USPTO computer is Windows. The repository for my tool, plint, is on both my USPTO and personal computers. With that being said, I make all the commits to the GitHub repository on my personal computer. > If I may ask yet another question: if your tools make you more efficient, does that impact perception of other examiners' "KPI metrics?" plint doesn't seem to have any effect on how I am perceived or how other examiners are perceived. I've told some examiners about plint. Some don't seem to be interested, others like the idea. I don't know of anyone else using plint on a regular basis. Also, using a tool like this doesn't necessarily make an examiner more efficient in the KPIs that upper management cares about. The most "efficient" approach would be to ignore 112(b) problems unless they are particularly obvious. In fact, I think that's what the incentives encourage: doing the bare minimum and moving on to the next application. However, a tool like this makes quality examination more efficient. I'd like to do as high quality a job as I can given the absurd time restrictions on my work. USPTO upper management gives a lot of lip service to quality, but quality isn't rewarded like "production" is. (Again, all this is my opinion and I don't speak for anyone else.)
- turtleyacht 4y agoThank-you for the reply--and for your frankness. Maybe one of the ways to make things better is from the inside, just by being there in this moment versus anytime else, with what we can work with. Our fair advantage is in the authoring of computing instructions, and that's as good a chance as we may get. I hope we will both have stories to share a decade hence.