H.R. 6621 has passed in the Senate, but only after the Senate eliminated section (m) of the bill that would have brought to light information regarding the hundreds of "pre-GATT" patent applications that have been pending since 1995. According to Capitol Hill rumors, well known patentee Gil Hyatt was able to convince one Senator to put a hold on the bill that would have eliminated possibility of passage barring the amendment. Hyatt apparently has a number of applications pending that claim architecture and logic design of very basic integrated circuits. There are several hundred of these pre-GATT applications pending. The majority are apparently ones delayed because of Department of Defense secrecy orders. However, a substantial number would be properly classified as submarine patents whose existence is currently unknown but that potentially claim a broad scope of coverage that could potentially cover elements of an entire mature industry (such as integrated circuits). Because the Senate amended the bill, it must be passed again by the House and signed by the President before conclusion of the term.
“Nope.”
Then what point are you trying to make? (Other than that you are just trolling?)
so are you saying MM that an applicant must sue to get the government to do their job and if the applicant does not that somehow it is his fault?
Nope.
…so are you saying MM that an applicant must sue to get the government to do their job and if the applicant does not that somehow it is his fault?
Blame the victim – how very sweet (and fitting to your general douchebag ways).
If the PTO is really arbitrarily indefinitely delaying prosecution of an application without any valid reason, and an applicant really wants to do something about that, this is precisely what filing a suit under the Administrative Proceedure Act is for, and it works.
So remind me again: what’s Hyatt’s excuse? Lack of money?
If the PTO is really arbitrarily indefinitely delaying prosecution of an application without any valid reason, and an applicant really wants to do something about that, this is precisely what filing a suit under the Administrative Proceedure Act is for, and it works. As I had explaned above, we are only here talking about applications pending 18 or more years WITHOUT any continuations or divisionals filed after June 8, 1995.
The Lemelson prosecution laches trial and the below study showed that extremely long total prosecution delays from original filing dates had been rare even before that date, and were largely the applications of certain individuals.
“..Excessive U.S. Pendencies and Suggested Treatments,
The John Marshall Law School Center for Intellectual Property 35 Annual Conference on Developments in Intellectual Property Law, February 21-22, 1991.”
“And it chooses to use its almighty powers arbitrarily, right?”
In a word: Yes.
Do you really doubt this?
Pretty sad for you actually.
You still can’t post responsibly, can you?
you are at least the fourth person
Pretty funny coming from the master sockpuppeteer himself.
it has the power to suspend prosecution indefinitely
And it chooses to use its almighty powers arbitrarily, right?
Speaking of the absurdly well-heeled and their whiny complaints, has everyone read Joe Mullin’s great article on the disgusting Project Paperless trollcapade?
link to arstechnica.com
Vicinanza made the unusual choice to fight back against Hill and “Project Paperless”—and actually ended up with a pretty resounding victory. But the Project Paperless patents haven’t gone away. Instead, they’ve been passed on to a network of at least eight different shell companies with six-letter names like AdzPro, GosNel, and FasLan. …
They send out vast quantities of letters, mainly to businesses that never could have imagined they’d be involved in any kind of patent dispute. They send them from anonymous and ever-changing shell companies.
The document trail suggests that partners at that law firm, including name partners Steven Hill and Scott Kertscher, may have ownership interests in the patent-trolling project through a network of other shell companies with names like Bonita Sunrise LLC and PCB Intellectual Properties.
…It hardly seems a coincidence that the Project Paperless patents were handed off to a web of generic-sounding LLCs, with demand letters signed only by “The Licensing Team,” shortly after the “Stop Project Paperless” website went up. It suggests those behind such low-level licensing campaigns aren’t proud of their behavior. And rightly so.
Scxmbags.
It is USPTO’s world when it has the power to suspend prosecution indefinitely – an apparent cause on which you seem to evade comment. We do agree, however, on the result.
MM, you apparently haven’t figured it out – it is the USPTO world
If it was the USPTO’s world, Hyatt’s pre-GATT apps would be dead by Congressional action. It wasn’t the USPTO who complained about the original version of HR 6621.
Fat chance. In case you haven’t figured this out yet: it’s Hyatt’s world. We just live in it.
MM, you apparently haven’t figured it out – it is the USPTO world; they are the ones sitting on these applications. From the statistics I cited above it is virtually certain that if it were up to Hyatt, some of his pending applications would have been issued a long time ago. And this goes to Paul Morgan too, on his reply comment on Post-GATT Continuations – these are irrelevant because we are talking about filings (including continuations) made before June 7, 1995.
This is all rather simple: whether justified or not, the USPTO decided after 1997 to stop issuing any patents to Hyatt on his “thousands of claims” pending before June 7, 1995. Here I agree with MM: my bet is that more than half of the Pre-GATT applications currently pending will still be pending in five years.
“Nice straw man, btw.”
LOL.
Maybe MM will want to debate the definition of “straw man” with you, as you are at least the fourth person to point out that which MM does (and yet accuses others of doing).
– no intellectual honesty gap with this one /eyeroll.
You’re just unbelievably dumm. Applicants are under statutory time limits to file responses, or their applications go abandoned. The PTO is under no such obligation. They can sit on replies and petitions and appeals for years and years and years. No application can remain pending for 10, 15, 20+ years through applicant shenanigans. Only PTO shenanigans can accomplish that. What do you not understand about that?
Nice straw man, btw.
I doubt if pre-GATT pending cases will be half of their present docket in 5 years, but here are some that I would guess may still keep pending:
Old applications under DOD secrecy orders that the owners have forgotten even exist, and/or do not realize the original secrecy order can be challenged as obsolete to get the case issued.
Old applications involved in interferences that went on appeal to a District Court and got settled or lost track of by the PTO. [The PTO should be sending status inquiry letters to the parties and/or the court clerks.]
Any place in PTO that applications can get lost.
Gil Hyatt, credited, after a 20-year fight for recognition, with the invention in 1970 of the single-chip microcontroller …. Because of challenges made after Hyatt received his patent award, his microcontroller patent was successfully challenged by Texas Instruments, although by that time Hyatt had already collected considerable royalties.
But he gave those royalties back, right, after his patent rights were flushed down the tlet?
Keep up the great work, AAA JJ. Without guys look you, incredibly wealthy people might have to hire publicists and shills to attack their perceived enemies.
One hopes that this prior lack of attention to proper work priorty and docket control has now been fixed for good by changes made under Kappos.
Nothing done by Lord Kappos is permanent. That’s probably a good thing.
Here’s a prediction for you: absent congressional action that simply eradicates the currently pending pre-GATT apps, at least half of them will still be pending in five years.
Paul,
Nice job. Your post is exactly why MM’s posts are simply asinine.
Re-filing applcations as continuations, divisionals and CIP’s after the GATT change in patent terms went into effect on June 8, 1995 no longer worked to indefinitely extend patent terms. That ended most of the prior submarine practice of doing that serially. You can’t just “refuse to accept allowances” either. Refiling would put those older applications into the new 20 years from original filing date patent terms.
But other things can delay applications. In particular filing lots of voluntary claim amendments with many added claims.
Unfortunately there have apparently been examiners who who would let applications with lots of added claims or complex prior file histories sit and rot unprocessed on their dockets, and a managagement that would let them get away with it.
One hopes that this prior lack of attention to proper work priorty and docket control has now been fixed for good by changes made under Kappos.
Yes, the PTO should have been giving rejections for prosecution laches in lots of long pending cases ever since the CAFC decided the Lemelson prosecution laches cases, where the delays were due to applicants rather than the PTO itself.
It’s hard to imagine you are really as dumm as your post indicates you are. Senators have to run for reelection if they want to keep their jobs. None of the lifers at the PTO have to do anything they don’t want to do, e.g. examine Hyatt’s applications. When Hyatt’s patents do issue and the file wrappers are opened up we’re going to see plenty of instances of Hyatt’s responses/petitions being sat on for years by the PTO, and probably bunches of “suspensions of action” for no reason whatsoever.
couldn’t the USPTO have invoked In re Bogese to deal with the dilatory conduct to get rid of Hyatt’s applications altogether
Fat chance. In case you haven’t figured this out yet: it’s Hyatt’s world. We just live in it.
Paul Morgan,
Thanks for providing this list of patents issued to Hyatt. I note that one of the patents issued in 1990 – the last year on your list of issued patents – was No. 4,942,516, the infamous microprocessor patent that caused much industry uproar about submarine patents (see link to what-when-how.com ), and may have been a significant impetus for the GATT changes in U.S. patent law in 1995.
I just checked the USPTO patent database and also observed that, as your list shows, Mr. Hyatt’s prosecution practice landed him an average of about three patent grants per year. However, this trend totally ceased with absolutely no grants since shortly after the GATT legislation was in effect, despite the fact that “literally thousands more of his ‘submarine’ claims are still pending.” Does this trend looks to you as a result of Mr. Hyatt’s elevating his dilatory tactics, refusing to accept any allowances, or rather USPTO change of tactics – suspending prosecution on all his Pre-GATT applications hoping he would go away? If the former theory is correct, couldn’t the USPTO have invoked In re Bogese to deal with the dilatory conduct to get rid of Hyatt’s applications altogether? But apparently the USPTO did nothing of the kind to any of these pending Per-GATT applications. Wouldn’t the latter theory be more plausible then, given that by indefinite suspension, the USPTO sought to avoid much flack and pressure of the sort it received from the IT industry in the mid 1990’s due to the ‘516 patent grant fiasco? How plausible is it, that of the “literally thousands” Hyatt claims still pending since 1995, none have issued due to anything other than USPTO’s de facto unstated policy to issue none?
the only more asinine comment from MM would be one implying that Gil Hyatt used his connections to have the office not examine his applications on purpose.
Better trolling please.
So now we see that Gil Hyatt can call one of his buddies in Congress and make stuff happen very quickly when he wants to stuff to happen very quickly.
But somehow he was unable to use his influen$e to get his pre-GATT applications examined in a timely manner.
Very curious. It’s almost as if Hyatt didn’t really want those pre-GATT applications to issue very quickly. But that can’t be right, can it?
Hyatt v. Dudas,(Fed. Cir. 2008) publicly exposed that literally thousands more of his “submarine” claims are still pending in a dozen patent applications with priority dates to the early 1980’s “or before”. The decision “..concerns the patentability of approximately 2,400 claims in twelve related patent applications..” and also notes that “..all twelve [Hyatt] applications were part of a series of continuation applications that claim priority to ancestor patent applications dating back to the early 1980s or before. In addition, all twelve applications were amended to add hundreds of claims that were not included in the original applications.”
———–
Here also are some of Gilbert Hyatt’s prior older submarine patent achievements* that you can check out, with issue and filing dates and total pendencies:
4,310,878*** 1982 1969 13
4,332,819*** 1982 1974 8
4,364,110*** 1982 1970 12
4,371,953*** 1983 1970 13
4,396,976*** 1983 1969 14
4,445,189*** 1984 1970 14
4,445,776*** 1984 1969 15
4,471,385*** 1984 1970 14
4,491,930*** 1985 1970 15
4,523,290*** 1985 1974 11
4,531,182*** 1985 1969 16
4,551,816*** 1985 1970? 15
4,553,213*** 1985 1970? 15
4,553,221*** 1985 1970? 15
4,614,415*** 1986 1970? 16
4,672,457*** 1987 1970? 17
4,686,655*** 1987 1970? 17
4,739,396*** 1988 1970? 18
4,744,042*** 1988 1974 14
4,829,419*** 1989 1969 20
4,870,559*** 1989 1969 20
4,910,706*** 1990 1972? 18
4,942,516*** 1990 1969 21
4,944,036*** 1990 1971 19
4,954,951*** 1990 1970 20
which senator?
I am glad that Hyatt was able to head off a change in the law that was mostly targeted at him personally.
Thank you for your comment, Mrs. Hyatt.
What exactly *have* you seen?
I am glad that Hyatt was able to head off a change in the law that was mostly targeted at him personally.
From what I have seen, most of the delays in Hyatt’s applications are due to the USPTO’s animosity toward him.
According to Capitol Hill rumors, well known patentee Gil Hyatt was able to convince one Senator to put a hold on the bill that would have eliminated possibility of passage barring the amendment. Hyatt apparently has a number of applications pending that claim architecture and logic design of very basic integrated circuits.
LOL. Great system we have here.
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