I’m looking forward to the upcoming 34th Annual Fall Institute on IP Law hosted by the University of Houston Law Center (law.uh.edu/ipil) and HIPLA (hipla.org) in Galveston on Sept 27, 2018. I am keynote speaker – with what I think is a fun topic:
“The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up [our Patent System and your Patent Portfolio], with apologies to Marie Kondo.”
I’ll post my materials after the talk.
The committee has put together a great program with 30+ speakers. Most are patent focused, but I’m particularly looking forward to Robert Cote’s talk on Funding IP and Seth Jaffe’s discussion of CyberSecurity. See you in Galveston!
As to the notion of “tidying up” and “our” patent system, that requires time, money and commitment, who will champion it, who will sponsor it? It might seem a silly question, but who exactly would even want to try?
MaxDrei, to answer your question in the larger context:
Maybe those to whom the authority is allocated per our Constitution.
As to specifics, well, Congress has set up its direct committees to which such work naturally falls.
Or did you have something else in mind?
Yes. What I had in mind is 1) who might lobby the committee, to kick start the tidying up process and 2) what might be the specific tidy that is commercially valuable enough to attract a big enough lobbying budget to get it implemented by the Congress.
Because it looks to me to be excruciatingly difficult, these days, to get anything that nurtures the general welfare through Congress and into effect.
Ah thanks – glad you mentioned “lobbying budget,” as that is a weakness (given Citizens United: can you say “capture”). That being said, your “anything that nurtures the general welfare” will NOT be inline with your “commercially valuable” – I do hope you see the schism there.
Hope in vain. I see nothing in the nature of a “schism”. I doubt you do either. But it’s a nice-sounding word, I’ll give you that.
A properly functioning system that issues patents of gazumptious commercial value also improves the general welfare by promoting the progress. More commercial value = more prosperity = more general welfare.
(that will have to do for the emoticon – I am not sure what the code is for a head slap
did anyone file amendments via fax during the EFS outage? have they been entered in the file history yet? ours still have not been entered yet and an one examiner has already issued an abandonment.
sorry pl, one of mine that was submitted by fax during the online fiasco has been processed normally.
Good topic.
P.S. Some good “Tidying Up” projects I have seen could be used in some companies still paying expensive foreign and U.S. maintenance fees on applications and patents to what has already become an obsolete or inferior technology not being used by anyone. Or, applications or patents with such narrow final or issued claims that they could be easily designed around. They could hire outside experts to do it and still save money.
[I realize that some companies think that keeping any and all patents or applications alive will makes them look more technology-oriented to investors, although I have never seen any proof of that. Also, some companies have played accounting games with patenting costs that may require a somewhat faster write-off.]
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