81–90 of 107 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you have a source for what the incentives are and how patent examiners are being paid? Do you know for a fact that it's per-approval, rather than per-application, or salaried with small commissions, or plain salaried? Assuming you're right, how would you fix the incentives?
Not even close to how it works.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you have a source for what the incentives are and how patent examiners are being paid? Do you know for a fact that it's per-approval, rather than per-application, or salaried with small commissions, or plain salaried? Assuming you're right, how would you fix the incentives?
Not even close to how it works.
The patent system was broken from the start. The incentives are all wrong, as USPTO officers get paid more, the more patents they approve. It's like paying fishermen for the fish they didn't catch.
The are paid on the GS salary scale. Examiners have a quota of "counts" where each count corresponds to some action they take during examination. It doesn't make any difference to them if they allow or reject patents. The more rounds of prosecution it takes means more counts for the examiner. Each round after the first requires additional fees from the applicant.
Re Patents (Just get rid of them entirely!) Please prove me wrong that they aren't effective and are a myth. Processes of how to do things often come down to engineering and math; if given the same goal a solution is likely to be similar at it's core as for any given problem there is probably an ideal bound and variations of effort will produce similar results or results optimized slightly to different circumstances.…
Can't even access the article with javascript turned off.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Patents aren't "meant to protect you from bigger companies muscling you out". That's a common story told to justify them, but US patents are meant to do what the US Constitution says about them: “To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.” Many people who do small startups think patents ar…
Their investors sure like them though. Patents are business assets that can be very important for valuation during exits or funding rounds. In most cases, due diligence auditors are going to want to see a company's patent portfolio. A bad or weak portfolio may not tank the deal, but it certainly impacts valuation. I have seen this first hand, if BigCo is choosing between two or more companies to acquire, they are mor…
Source: filed a lot of patents and trademarks in my small startups, they were useful at exit, still hate patents with a passion.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
True, but whether the examiners or the USPTO get that money is totally beside the point.
Incentives to make yourself more money are much stronger than incentives to make the government more money. And as others have mentioned, USPTO gets more money the more filings they require.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
why not provide some details? at least how you got in touch with the nice lawyer, that might help others.
Sure. All I can recommend is to contact the EFF. They had some lawyers willing to work with us. The lawyer who did end up working with us was from California and specialized in patent trolls. I'm outside the office right now so I can't tell you specifically who it was You may also be able to strike a deal with the patent trolls. We were able to take them down to 40k from 100k. That was still ridiculous for us but if…
and this is why patent trolls exist
Earlier quoted context omitted.
After a patent is approved, there will be more fees down the line, such as for amending or maintaining the patent. Therefore, the USPTO will make more money from an approved patent than a rejected patent.
Post issuance maintenance fees are a good thing. They encourage patent owners to abandon patents earlier than their maximum term (20 years after filing) if they don't want them any more.