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You don't seem to understand the patent system. It doesn't matter how obvious something is. There's a good likelihood someone at the overworked, understaffed

You don't seem to understand the patent system. It doesn't matter how obvious something is. There's a good likelihood someone at the overworked, understaffed USPTO will rubber stamp it. Bombarding the USPTO with patents for any and everything you can possibly think of is a valid strategy, because once you get it, it's a lot of work and expense to overturn and you can start extorting people in the meantime. Microsoft didn't start out with this attitude, but when it was applied to them, they decided join in and hard. If you're a programmer who can do more than write a for loop that counts to 10, I can almost guarantee you've violated a patent. In fact, I used to joke about getting a patent on the for loop. If Fortran, or whatever language first had for loops, had been created today, there would probably be a patent granted for it.

DannyBee 12y ago
"You don't seem to understand the patent system." 1. I"m a registered patent attorney. 2. I run www.google.com/patents 3. I talk to examiners frequently 4. I spent years of my life working for patent reform in DC Trust me, I understand how the patent system works. The USPTO is not horribly understaffed. They have other issues. One of the main issues is actually that the patent examiners are union, and the union is not really on board with them being asked to do significantly more work (IE searching harder), unless they get significantly more pay. In a lot of cases, they can't get significantly more pay, because there are salary caps on federal employees, etc.
- Perseids 12y ago
  > The USPTO is not horribly understaffed. They have other issues. One of the main issues is actually that the patent examiners are union, and the union is not really on board with them being asked to do significantly more work (IE searching harder), unless they get significantly more pay. In a lot of cases, they can't get significantly more pay, because there are salary caps on federal employees, etc. Is that not something you could solve with more employees? If the task does not lend to parallelization, let each team work 2k weeks on every application instead of the current k weeks and employ doubly the amount of teams.
  - DannyBee 12y ago
    "Is that not something you could solve with more employees? If the task does not lend to parallelization, let each team work 2k weeks on every application instead of the current k weeks and employ doubly the amount of teams." The USPTO does not have the budget to double their staff. They are also getting pushed as hard as possible to lower pendency periods, which are already 3+ years in a lot of cases. If they did double their staff, the union would just demand even more concession, because they would have more power, not less. If they doubled pendency, they'd get murdered by congress. So they can't really win.
- throwawaykf05 12y ago
  Note that the "not searching harder" problem cuts both ways. Examiners get rewarded for moving applications off their desks regardless of whether they are approved or rejected. As such, I have seen as many frivolous rejections as I've seen frivolous approvals. One rejection I saw cited some unrelated reference and literally just made arguments up. There are no stats on this, obviously, but my anecdotal guess is examiners would prefer slightly to err on the side of rejection than approval. YMMV.

DannyBee 12y ago

"You don't seem to understand the patent system." 1. I"m a registered patent attorney. 2. I run www.google.com/patents 3. I talk to examiners frequently 4. I spent years of my life working for patent reform in DC Trust me, I understand how the patent system works. The USPTO is not horribly understaffed. They have other issues. One of the main issues is actually that the patent examiners are union, and the union is not really on board with them being asked to do significantly more work (IE searching harder), unless they get significantly more pay. In a lot of cases, they can't get significantly more pay, because there are salary caps on federal employees, etc.

Perseids 12y ago
> The USPTO is not horribly understaffed. They have other issues. One of the main issues is actually that the patent examiners are union, and the union is not really on board with them being asked to do significantly more work (IE searching harder), unless they get significantly more pay. In a lot of cases, they can't get significantly more pay, because there are salary caps on federal employees, etc. Is that not something you could solve with more employees? If the task does not lend to parallelization, let each team work 2k weeks on every application instead of the current k weeks and employ doubly the amount of teams.
- DannyBee 12y ago
  "Is that not something you could solve with more employees? If the task does not lend to parallelization, let each team work 2k weeks on every application instead of the current k weeks and employ doubly the amount of teams." The USPTO does not have the budget to double their staff. They are also getting pushed as hard as possible to lower pendency periods, which are already 3+ years in a lot of cases. If they did double their staff, the union would just demand even more concession, because they would have more power, not less. If they doubled pendency, they'd get murdered by congress. So they can't really win.
throwawaykf05 12y ago
Note that the "not searching harder" problem cuts both ways. Examiners get rewarded for moving applications off their desks regardless of whether they are approved or rejected. As such, I have seen as many frivolous rejections as I've seen frivolous approvals. One rejection I saw cited some unrelated reference and literally just made arguments up. There are no stats on this, obviously, but my anecdotal guess is examiners would prefer slightly to err on the side of rejection than approval. YMMV.