It has been clear for a long time that finding factual information to support patent law was not taken anywhere near as seriously as finding factual information to support criminal law. Not even close. I came up with an analogy. If criminal law functioned like patent law we would have no prisons, treat all crimes...
A conversation on 1st Office Action patent grants got me thinking about the Accelerated Examination Program where obtaining a patent on the 1st Office Action was the hoped for outcome. The Accelerated Examination Program commenced on August 25, 2006. PTO statistics end on May 29, 2015. A Federal Register Notice on August 16, 2016 suggest...
Rule 56 is a significant obstacle blocking patent quality reform. Patent quality is defined as a patents ability to withstand a validity challenge brought on prior art evidence. Rule 56 discourages applicants from looking for and submitting prior art evidence. Rule 56 is obsolete and adverse to patent quality. If applicants had the opportunity to...
S. 4704, the Patent Quality and Improvement Act of 2022 requires the GAO to define a clear and thorough search. As an expert searcher this is not hard. I approach this question from the experience of a searcher in the engineering arts. Chemical searches and bio-tech follow different procedures. First of all, a clear and...
On August 2, the Examination and Quality Improvement Act of 2022 was introduced in the Senate. The Statute directs the GAO to produce a report directed to patent quality that will, among other things, “…more clearly defining what constitutes a clear and thorough search by a patent examiner…” This searcher argues that a patentability search...
What in the world is the patent agent apprenticeship and why talk about a revival? On March 23, 2021, the PTO published a Request for Comments in the Federal Register directed to the Technical Qualifications prerequisite to become a Patent Agent. The PTO proposed and subsequently implemented minor administrative changes to the General Requirements Bulletin...