Study Suggests Patent Office Lowered Standards To Cope With Backlog 96
An anonymous reader points out a story at Ars about how the "significant reduction" in the backlog of pending patent applications may not be all that it seems. "...a new study suggests another explanation for the declining backlog: the patent office may have lowered its standards, approving many patents that would have been (and in some cases, had been) rejected under the administration of George W. Bush. The authors—Chris Cotropia and Cecil Quillen of the University of Richmond and independent researcher Ogden Webster—used Freedom of Information Act requests to obtain detailed data about the fate of patent applications considered by the USPTO since 1996.
They found that the "allowance rate," the fraction of applications approved by the patent office, declined steadily from 2001 and 2009. But in the last four years there's been a sharp reversal, with a 2012 allowance rate about 20 percent higher than it was in 2009."
Re:Maybe people are writing better patents...nope. (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't know what the proper term is relating to what I think are "patent departments." I'd like to see if there's a breakdown in the acceptance rates across various lines of expertise. The reason is because I have a belief that much of this is indeed because of patent trolling. If that were the case, I'd expect that a number of departments would still show about the same acceptance rate.
Since the Comp Sci patent applications typically invent and redefine their terms in the patent application (after all, they're creating new "ideas"), they've found more effective ways to get their "inventions" defined in a way that appears more patentable. Also, it looks like some work at Stanford showed that rejecting patents really just increased their workload for a variety of reasons. Path of least resistance will eventually win you know...
http://siepr.stanford.edu/?q=/system/files/shared/pubs/11-014.pdf [stanford.edu]
Re:Maybe people are writing better patents...nope. (Score:4, Insightful)
Obama "reformed" patents to make them more "business friendly."
Damn that socialist!
It's hard to imagine anyone being easier on business than Bush Jr., but there you go.
Re:Maybe people are writing better patents...nope. (Score:4, Insightful)
Damn it.
This time it is Obama's fault!
Re:The more frivilous applications you make... (Score:5, Insightful)
smart companies aren't going to peruse patents that are frivolous and/or won't hold up in court.
Smart companies know the patent doesn't have to stand up in court, it just has to cost the competitor millions of dollars to prove it doesn't stand up.
Trolling companies know the patent doesn't have to stand up in court, it just has to cost their victim millions of dollars to prove it doesn't stand up in court so they'll pay a few hundred thousand to save money.