I can tell you a reason I see. The big corporations are trying to save money (at the patent attorneys expense) by combining invention disclosures which tends to add inventors.
6.1
I don’t see that as a trend, as I have had such throughout my career — more or less at a fairly steady rate.
Just my view.
5
Does anybody have the numbers for any other one of the world’s large Patent Offices? I mean, suppose the average everywhere else in the world is between 3 and 4 and the USPTO figures are rising assymptotically to the ROW average? Or (more interesting) suppose the figures everywhere else exhibit an average of around 2.5 and display no gentle rise at all to any higher number of inventors.
I suspect that the rise is driven by corporate life in Asia, where efforts to save face and not offend people results in an upward creep of numbers of inventors named in each new patent application. No harm done! Everybody wins, eh?
Besides, technology has become so advanced and complex that these days that it takes a team to reduce to practice any meaningful, useful and real contribution to any given technical field. A rise in inventor numbers would therefore connote a rise in the proportion, amongst applns filed at the USPTO, of cutting edge contributions to the useful arts. That’s progress!
5.1
The idea of “no harm done” flies in the direct face of the requirements of our Sovereign.
Actual inventors only please — there IS an oath involved.
5.1.1
The idea of “no harm done” flies in the direct face of the requirements of our Sovereign.
LOL
You’re so serious, Billy! Very deep stuff.
5.1.1.1
Brush away the mindless ad hominem, and (yet again), you have contributed Zero here Malcolm.
Can you at least try to say something intelligent?
5.2
And no, there is NO such tie from an inflated number of inventors (if as posited, the number is merely inflated) and actual filings and use of patent systems (a Mother and Apple Pie type of good).
Apply a little more critical thinking and a little less bootstrapping.
5.3
Lastly, let’s NOT over-emphasize the Lemley-ism of “it takes a village.”
Least of all, until we reciprocate with the recognition that it may also “take a village” on the infringement side and stop requiring single actor mode for direct infringement.
5.3.1
This is beyond absurd. You are a hack.
5.3.1.1
Your feelings – as vapid as they are – are noted.
5.3.1.1.1
Explain to everyone your reasoning. Why does the recognition of the fact that some innovations are conceived of by multiple inventors somehow mandate a loosening of the requirement that direct infringement be performed by a single actor? What’s the logic?
Why not relax the requirement that claims be written as a single sentence, too? Because … multiple inventors! And let’s relax the requirement of one invention per patent. Because … multiple inventors!
Is that how it goes? Seriously?
5.3.1.1.1.1
“Explain to everyone your reasoning.”
Heed your own advice – for most all of your own positions.
As to the logic of applying multiple actor culpability in both directions as opposed to only in a single direction, this is eminently logical, and if you cannot grasp that you have no business being near any public interaction device, let alone a forum concerned with patent law.
As to “Why not relax the requirement that claims be written as a single sentence, too?” – now that you bring up that strawman, why not? Please follow your onw advice and “Explain to everyone your reasoning.”
And yes – seriously. Or are you just going to shuffle this off (yet again) for someone else to actually engage and supply answers?
5.3.1.1.1.1.1
Just explain the logic Billy. Defend your own horsesh t.
…
Let me know when you have read (and understand) the logic of the Lemley “it takes a village” to invent.
(it’s kind of important here that you DO understand that)
5.3.1.1.1.1.2
I don’t need any help from Lemley to understand that increasingly “it takes a village” to invent. Of course it does.
I have no understanding why it should “take a village” to infringe. Why should it?
As far as I know, you and you alone advance that maverick proposition. But you don’t tell us why. Until you do, I will assume that your only reason is that you are feeling deprived of conversation on this blog, and so are trolling it.
…
MaxDrei,
It is less “should” and more “happens to.”
As innovation enlargens its “scope” and reach to involve the village, oft times it is also more than one actor that is implicated in the innovation.
Are innovations still being done for which single actor modes are perfectly accommodating?
Of course. No one is suggesting anything different.
Are innovation ALSO being done for which the attempts to constrain claim language down to a single actor an “exercise in scrivining” that strains the verse?
Absolutely. Can there be any doubt?
Just as you need not any help from Lemley on the one side, I certainly hope that you need no help on the other.
It is really not all that surprising that those most against patent rights will have the most trouble seeing this natural extension.
…
I have to say, what a flight of fancy, of unsupported wishful thinking.
Given the ever greater specialisation of expert knowledge in the world of today, and the ever greater maturity of technology, it is ever more likely to require a discussion, an exchange of views between specialists, a collective brainstorm, to conceive of a non-obvious and patentably new contribution to the art.
But it is irrelevant, to the question which corporation it is who is committing a single act of infringement, how many expert human individuals contributed to the conception of the invention that was patented and is now asserted to be infringed by that corporation.
…
It’s not wishful thinking – but rather simple logic. Try reading my post again.
…
I will assume that… you are… trolling… .
Given the mountains of evidence underlying this conclusion, I am skeptical that the verb you want is “assume.” I would think that “conclude” or “deduce” or “infer” are each nearer the mark.
…
Greg, two thoughts:
Long ago, I inferred it, I deduced it, I concluded it. I chose the word “assume” in an attempt to tease out of him a reply, some indication of the “logic” he claims to be expressing.
And what did that achieve? Any revelation of his “logic” in reply? No chance! Only his usual silly admonishment, that we are just not reading his earlier post carefully enough.
…
What a bunch of whiners who evidence more than anything that they simply do not want to move from their own positions.
By the by, the use of “tr011ing” does not — cannot — describe my contribution here since I added the notion that “it takes a village” is more than just a one-way street description of how innovation has evolved.
Tr011ing is more like what Malcom does: take aimless ad hominem shots that add nothing. I added something and it is THAT something is that which is being “tr011ed.”
For Greg’s sake, he confuses anyone attacking his viewpoint as “tr011ing.” He conflates the proper use of such rhetorical devise as sarcasm and biting humor (which are proper when they are on point and more than mindless) and in fact he has set himself as a f001 for choosing to never engage with someone that has a better grasp of the law and that can show that sarcasm appropriately against viewpoints that he would rather not defend.
MaxDrei, has you heeded what I suggested, you may have realized that I was not advocating some type of “must switch” and more so, the simple realization that the aim of innovative efforts have come to include innovations in which groups partake.
This is not an altogether new phenomenon.
The earlier “treatment” of this phenomenon was to simply write more than one claim set, but the language of each set was set with focus on actions from but one half (or one side of a two sided shared innovation).
This type of writing though is artificial and constrained.
This type of writing is largely not well understood outside of the corner of patent law – and in part – contributes to the notion of Justices in our Sovereign viewing patent writers as devious scriviners.
I draw attention to the fact that these things ARE related, and that one side of that relation HAS seen efforts to have the view of patents change and be “updated.” For what possible reason would not the whole of patents (and patent writing), NOT have this wider view applied?
You seek to dismiss with a cavalier “I have not seen this before” as if applying yourself along a new path of thinking must somehow in and of itself be wrong. You scoff when I have offered you a first step, but you do not take that first step.
How often have I led you along a path to a well of knowledge, only to have you refuse to drink?
Why then do more than offer a first step to you? If you take that first step and show some (any) willingness to actually engage your mental facilities (instead of, as here, cast dispersions at the person rather than the content of the post), perhaps we can advance another step.
You dismiss out of hand relevancy of the nature of innovation encompassing more than a single actor to create, but somehow cannot possibly take more than a single actor to engage in.
You seek to “tease out” all the while you have NO intention of actually engaging on anything that might be “teased out.”
If your definition of “tr011ing” is to post but to do so with no real intention of engaging, are you not doing the very thing that you accuse me of?
…
To put it another way, here are three questions:
1. How many individuals does it increasingly take, to invent patentable subject matter?
2. How many products (or processes) did it used to take, to infringe a duly issued claim?
3. How many products (or processes) will it take, going forwards, to infringe a claim?
…
“To put it another way, here are three questions:
1. How many individuals does it increasingly take, to invent patentable subject matter?”
If you has done as requested, you would have seen that the position that I put forth does NOT make this a “must” type of scenario.
The answer to your question then pivots on your use of “does it.” There is NO answer of “does it.” The “does it” occurs across a spectrum, with BOTH individuals as well as teams contributing to innovation.
“2. How many products (or processes) did it used to take, to infringe a duly issued claim?”
Here, you get closer, and yet still miss. You focus TOO MUCH on “infringe a duly issued claim” and miss the actual point presented of WHAT constitutes a “duly issued claim.”
Traditional claim writing has been forced to write innovation IN a single user mode — whether or not the innovation is truly in a single user mode. Note how I provided that claim writing has often taken the “viewpoint” of one actor or another, and that such constrained view writing is part of a larger problem in how the Court (here, the US sovereign) has taken to view claim scrivining.
The larger point here (to which you scoff and do not take ANY steps along a path) is that innovation simply is NOT constrained to the claim format of an individual actor.
“3. How many products (or processes) will it take, going forwards, to infringe a claim?”
Same mindlessness from you. This is just NOT a pertinent question to the actual contribution of my post. That you ASK this type of question shows that you simply have not grasped the point at hand. EVEN IF I were to do more than provide you with an initial step, you show here that you would not even recognize the steps asked of you.
All too often MaxDrei, you show how locked in you are to your own decades of travel around a single block. You have in the past used the phrase “mind willing to understand” and you constantly show the opposite.
You then deign to insult those actually showing thinking.
…
Justices in our Sovereign viewing patent writers as devious scriviners.
Not all patent writers. Just the writers who are trying to protect ineligible subject matter by writing claims that intentionally obscure the new subject matter (and the nature of the new subject matter) that is being protected.
…
Malcolm,
Your whining is noted.
4
I’d love to know if the increase in the number of inventors-per-patent is driven by applications filed by large technology companies.
One issue I have personally seen, that has driven up the number of inventors in many companies, is the rise of incentive programs that provide a monetary bonus to each inventor-employee listed on a patent application (e.g. $5K, $10K, $15K per inventor) once a patent issues. Companies obviously implement these programs to reward engineers for being inventive, but if not managed properly, these programs can result in patents with large numbers of inventors.
This is because (my bias is showing here), many engineers are generally nice and generous people. They want their friends at the company to share the rewards, so they allow their friends to also be listed as inventors even if they weren’t really involved. The social pressure for those friends to reciprocate is huge, and before long, you have webs of socially interconnected engineers at a company who end up being named on basically every invention any of them creates. And because the patent issuance bonus for each inventor is the same (no matter how many inventors are listed), what’s the harm? Before long, you end up seeing very simple, 5-column patents on simple things, that obviously one person invented, with 12 listed inventors. I can’t even tell you how many patents from these companies that I’ve had to due diligence (for acquisition or other purposes), where I interview inventors and they say, “yeah, I wasn’t really involved, it was really all xxxx’s idea.”
Some companies have tried to combat this problem with a “pro rata” incentive system in which a patent issuance gets a fixed reward, and the named inventors split the reward. The greater the number of inventors, the less each inventor gets. That creates potentially more perverse incentives, of naming fewer people and potentially excluding actual inventors. Inventorship issues can be corrected, of course, but leaving inventors off a patent is usually a bigger deal than having extra people listed. And the incentives of a pro rata system can kind of poison your corporate culture…
The better system is usually the non pro-rata model, along with a better trained in-house legal team that conducts interviews to try to root out inventorship collusions (which is not easy if the department is pushing out hundreds of applications per year). In any event, it would be fascinating if it could be determined whether the number of inventors-per-patent is rising more (in a statistically significant way) among the bigger, more prolific patent applicants than smaller companies, within a particular art group. I suspect you’d find some kind of correlation.
4.1
You would think that the better way to solve this problem would be to actually keep track of what projects one’s employees are working on, and reward them accordingly.
4.1.1
My experience is that the number of inventors is driven by the large variations of claim scope, from very specific to fairly broad, and the way engineering work is distributed in large companies. It is now rare that an application is filed only with broad claims. Specific claims are usually conceived by junior engineers, and broad claims by experienced engineers.
3
Update on the PAP update stuff, I haven’t got a hard copy of the changes to the PAP but one of the popa guys made a vid talking about the changes and basically it sounds to me like they tried to put all the grandmaster level stuff. Stuff like proposing amendments to overcome the art, and meeting workflow a bit sooner, and never refusing an interview without good reason (using the arbitrary and capricious standard lol as if most examiners understand that) and several other things will now be in the PAP as just being “fully successful” (and this is apparently the toned down version of the PAP). However they did provide a few extra hours per case to do all this extra stuff. And perhaps a few extra hours on top of that depending on the specifics of the case. There are also a few annoying odds and ends for examiners but they are likely nobody’s big concern.
For me all this new stuff is routine stuff that I do routinely, however I recognize that it is grandmaster level stuff that every joe schmo examiner likely cannot do without extensive training and effort.
Truthfully all this stuff likely should have been in the pap for years (decades) but the existing staff was not brought up to that, either in training or in personal effort to accomplish it. Overall I think they’re likely trying to make the changes a bit too fast, and there should be a year or two phase in time for people. Nobody can come up to these standards at the drop of a hat. And further, there might very well be many examiners “left behind” by these super changes that are truthfully grandmaster level sht, and which should probably be left at being recognized as being grandmaster level, not the “fully successful” for your avg everyday joe examiner. Here in not too long they’ll require examiners to be the examiner and the attorney to boot just to meet “fully successful”. That is probably not appropriate. Any examiner that can do all these things should be recognized as the grandmaster that they are, not merely fully successful. That’s my take. If they successfully pull the whole corps up to grandmaster level then more credit to the leadership. But if a whole swath of examiners suddenly aren’t fully successful then that’s a failure on mgmt’s part to set achievable goals for joe schmoe examiner.
Finally there is a small issue in that they changed things in such a way that if the supervisor doesn’t bother to document your good work then you don’t get credit for it (leaving the door open to favoritism, even presuming you do the good work the spe might not document it and give you a good rating). That should be ameliorated imo in some way but by and large I would suspect mgmt would be more or less fair.
Finally I should note that the current trend towards requiring more and more and more should likely be undone and reversed. Examiners today are doing a whole sht ton compared to some schmoe in the 80’s. Esp. if this new pap goes through and is rigorously enforced. It’s literally not a far jump from what is required now in the pap to requiring them to be an actual attorney at least in terms of prosecution.
A couple of odds and ends are that they took away the “error categories” and made it so that failure to do a sufficient search is now basically straight up an error, and a few other things straight up an error (like ODP/DP rejections) that were previously cat 1 (nobody cares about cat 1 errors). The only area of concern here is that this is supposedly SUBJECTIVELY determined. If the office considers all of these things SUBJECTIVELY determined by mgmt personnel then there is no point to having a pap at all and the SPEs should just give out errors whenever they feel like it. All of these things have to be objectively determinable, and established as objectively determinable before an error is charged, or else there is no point to any of this. Spes can just give out errors like weeee, you get an error, you get an error, you don’t get an error, wheeeee. And the directors can uphold those errors like whee you get an error, you get an error, you don’t get an error, you don’t get an error, you get an error. Ridiculous standard. Preposterous. Not even worth having a standard at all if it is subjective.
3.1
Also I should note right fast that the objectivity to the standard should be there literally for the benefit of the agency, not merely to the benefit of the examiners. The only people that lose out with an objective standard would be “bad actor” mgmt individuals trying to charge errors where none should exist. And having the fewer of those in their ranks is in the best interest of the agency as a whole, self-evidently, though I can walk anyone interested through why if they’re not smert enough.
3.1.1
Also I should tell Ben that apparently POPA approved this already by vote. The guy that made the vid did not vote to approve.
3.1.1.1
There is some serious attitude issues with the guy who made this video.
I would not go so far as saying that he has no valid points – he does.
But by and large, the whining is rather over the top.
3.2
I wonder if you realize how contradictory you come across with your “grandmaster” theme juxtaposed to your “this is all routine” line…
Separately, I am reminded of past “you get what you measure” points that I posted.
There will undoubtedly STILL be examiners confusing the measures of how they do their job with WHAT their job is, but at least it appears (and appearance only, since the details are not yet out) that at least someone is recognizing some basic management concepts and are trying to focus on improving examination quality (the only thing that the Office may actually control).
3.2.1
“I wonder if you realize how contradictory you come across with your “grandmaster” theme juxtaposed to your “this is all routine” line…”
It is routine once you are a grandmaster and have studied the “legal arts” (decisions, drafting guides, etc. etc.) for literal years worth of time in your life. If you haven’t then it is not routine. Many, if not the vast majority of examiners have not.
“There will undoubtedly STILL be examiners confusing the measures of how they do their job with WHAT their job is, but at least it appears (and appearance only, since the details are not yet out) that at least someone is recognizing some basic management concepts and are trying to focus on improving examination quality (the only thing that the Office may actually control).”
Probably true. But then again what their actual job is, is largely a matter of decree. Still, one can only decree so many things and expect much of it to actually happen.
3.2.1.1
“Probably true. But then again what their actual job is, is largely a matter of decree. Still, one can only decree so many things and expect much of it to actually happen.”
Which is why the admonition of “Do your Fn job” applies as much as it does.
3.2.1.1.1
You can demand water to not be wet but that’s not going to make it not wet. You can demand a GED worker to do the work of a lawlyer but it isn’t going to make the legal work be golden.
“that at least someone is recognizing some basic management concepts and are trying to focus on improving examination quality”
Also I forgot to tell you I heard that was Donny T, word on the street is that he was perusing PO (I would guess my own posts) and just decided to cram them right in. Probably too direct of an approach, but I suppose it is a start.
3.2.1.1.1.1
It’s more like YOU demanding water not to be wet and me pointing out that the job merely requires that water be recognized as being wet.
NO ONE is demanding an Examiner BE a lawyer. We are demanding that you APPLY the law (and as a member of the executive branch — and that BEING your job — that’s simply not asking for anything special.
3.2.1.1.1.1.1
“NO ONE is demanding an Examiner BE a lawyer. ”
From what I’m hearing, mgmt practically is, indeed they want examiners to be better than lawlyers. In several ways.
Indeed, they’re demanding examiners be even better than a lawlyer in at least some ways, we’re supposed to first know what is legally sufficient for a given 103, and then on top of that magically know if the SPEs can find a better 2ndary ref to make a 103 with (apparently outside of the search done even) all so that we don’t get a clear error on any given of the hundreds of 103’s done in a year.
And on the whole we also have to not only be able to know what good rejections are legally (like a lawlyer), but we also have to write a legally correct action THAT WILL ADDITIONALLY subjectively please mgmt (who all too often are not trained to the T’s), all so we don’t get a “clear errorlol”. Which determination is apparently now being reduced to nothing but a joke since apparently none of the current mgmt understand the entire foundation of the gubmit making objective determinations. Being able to do those things at the same time is way more complicated than: “herp derp gotta show all da elements” “herp derp non-analogous art!”.
Oh but one thing I did hear and I forgot to tell people about, they may be entirely dropping clear errors for examiners under GS11 (which was in reality a practicality often anyway).
…
They may want examiners to be better than lawyers AT the job of examining.
Again, that’s nothing more than “do your Fn job.”
3.3
“It’s literally not a far jump from what is required now in the pap to requiring them to be an actual attorney at least in terms of prosecution.”
Hardly.
3.4
That POPA guy hasn’t the slightest clue what he’s talking about. That video amounts to a lot of blathering, fear mongering, and attacks on management and POPA both.
3.4.1
…link?
3.4.1.1
You’ll need a Facebook account to view it, but go to link to facebook.com and it is the 40 minute video he posted on 1/23 (Wednesday).
3.4.2
I must have heard it 3rd hand.
3.4.2.1
Oh. Well. That explains all your rambling.
If you’re a good examiner, there’s nothing to worry about. If you’re not a good examiner, there’s already something to worry about, this just codifies certain programs and issues and eliminates shortcuts (like issuing a bunch of restrictions to game the program).
3.4.2.1.1
I don’t think that’s entirely accurate. It looks like the changes will slightly reduce average examining time in high BD arts.
2
What does the median look like? And what do the mean and median look like if you exclude sole inventor patents? Is the increasing average primarily the result of larger and larger teams, (proportionally) fewer sole inventor patents, or both?
One assumes there’s some practical upper limit to the number of inventors that can feasibly be involved in a single invention, but perhaps we haven’t reached it yet. What does the standard deviation look like over time?
2.1
One assumes there’s some practical upper limit to the number of inventors that can feasibly be involved in a single invention, but perhaps we haven’t reached it yet.
Inventorship is such a nebulous area of the law it makes obviousness look like the speed limit.
Let’s say three people A, B and C get listed as inventors on new patent disclosing invention X. A year later there’s an improvement to X, the subject of a second patent, and the improvement was solely the result of D’s work. The claim recites all the elements of the invention in the first patent in addition to D’s contribution. In how many instances do you suppose that the list of inventors on that second application includes only D? Now assume same facts except the improvement is solely the work of C. Whatever the answer to the first question is, you can bet that the number is even lower for the second question. Inventorship listings are driven as much by perks and pride as they are by legal “formalities.”
2.1.1
Speed…
…limit?
Did you mean to say something else?
2.1.2
“ The claim recites all the elements of the invention in the first patent in addition to D’s contribution.”
Are you saying that THAT claim should only list D (in some type of inventor list)?
That seems to have a different inventorship listing mechanism than one in place.
Perhaps if the system were modified such that inventors were listed after each claim, then your musings might make more sense.
(and even if that made more sense, I still don’t see what you were trying to ay with obviousness being a speed limit in relation to inventorship)
It’s almost as if you have formualted a view while thinking that Jepson claim format is a mandatory claim format, and that IF things were forced into that claim format AND IF inventors had to be listed for each claim element outside of the preamble THEN the individual claim elements could be “better” parsed into tiny pieces and each tiny piece then could be “seen” for the obviousness that it represents.
But that’s not how either obviousness or innovation works.
Or did you mean something else?
2.1.2.1
I see that Malcolm is too busy in his drive-by monologue, internet-style shout down of feelings to actually engage…
1
. . . meaning fewer and fewer patented inventions from our independent inventors . . .
1.1
Why should anyone care? For the life of me I’ve never understood why a slow decrease in the number of inventions filed by one person should make a hill of beans of difference to anybody … except perhaps for some lame club whose dues are paid by “solo” inventors.
Other than that, why should anyone on the planet be concerned by this?
If anything, it shows that people are slowly learning to work together on innovations. Or maybe it shows that people are learning to give credit where credit is due, rather than stealing the “glory” all for themselves. Those are trends we should be grateful for. HOORAY!
1.1.1
“Why should anyone care?”
It should be more than intuitive why anyone should care – leastwise, anyone with ANY sense of American history and US pioneer culture that is.
Those who detest this aspect of American Culture (and detest a strong patent system) and who clamor for patents for monied concerns while attacking protection for innovation modes most accessible by the non-wealthy exhibit so many levels of cognitive dissonance that they appear on patent blogs and create blight.
Case in point being our own Malcolm Mooney.
By the by, you offer some possible alternatives and sure, there may be some half truths to those alternatives, but the larger picture here is one that is more than those halves. You also kick up dust with an attempt to impugn your own profession (club and dues???).
Get into a profession that you do not detest Malcolm. You — and everyone else — will be far better for it.
1.1.1.1
attacking protection for innovation modes most accessible by the non-wealthy
“Accessible.”
ROTFLMAO
Here in Merka derp derp anyone can buy a skyscraper derp derp!
1.1.1.1.1
You obviously do not understand the stultifying irony in your attempted put-down here.
You truly are the Trump of these boards.
1.1.1.1.1.1
No law is stopping those poor people from buying that skyscraper, Billy. Equal access for all!
America is the BEST. Who can deny it? Numero uno. If it weren’t born here, well, it kinda s cks to be you. Same if you had poor parents and had to struggle to reach the top, like Billy’s Presnit Derpderp.
1.1.1.1.1.1.1
Yet again, you post a reply that is pure nonsense.
Try again. This time, try sober (and try when you are in control of your feelings )
And the “your president” schtick didn’t work last time. Why would you think it would work this time?
1.2
I suppose that if individual inventors are clever enough to invent genuinely new and commercially useful inventions, I would welcome their contributions to the useful arts. I am not surprised, however, that there are fewer and fewer such contributions to be made.
Technologically speaking, most of the low hanging fruit has been picked. We have invented the easy technological advances 100 years ago. The next great technologies require correspondingly more genius to conceive. The requisite level of genius, by and large, is more than can be found in single human individuals, or even pairs of smart people. The sorts of technologies remaining to be invented require teams of smart people working together.
1.2.1
More canards.
This runs to the “Let’s close the patent office as all inventions worth being made have already been made” type of thinking.
As I noted in previous “the sky is falling” type pieces, data skew need be accounted for with appropriate normalization factors.
As I recall, a graph was shown with the percentage of single named inventors dropping.
Critical evaluation easily revealed that the actual number of single named patents ROSE during that time period.
Rose – NOT declined.
It was the relative number that had the decline.
But slack thinking pervades – and then pervades the responses and invites poor policy decisions. ALL of this MORE indicates a susceptibility to propaganda, which only invites such propaganda (patent Tr011s and the “E V I Ls” of enforcing patents in the courts of law anyone?; patents “blocking” others anyone? — hint: blocking others is a form of PROMOTING innovation, as the adage of “Necessity is the mother of invention” comes from the underlying reality of this very core aspect of patents). Slack thinking is a bane to patents, to what patents are for, to innovation protection, and to innovation itself.
1.2.1.1
This runs to the “Let’s close the patent office as all inventions worth being made have already been made” type of thinking.
Which is a type of thinking held by pretty much nobody.
But I like watching your tiny tiny muscles ripple as you shred that strawman. Very impressive, Billy!
1.2.1.1.1
That’s a mighty compliment coming from the king of strawman.
Chart shows average for all US Utility Patents Issued Each Year.
Relevant discussion on this week’s EconTalk.
Excellent link – thanks Greg.
I can tell you a reason I see. The big corporations are trying to save money (at the patent attorneys expense) by combining invention disclosures which tends to add inventors.
I don’t see that as a trend, as I have had such throughout my career — more or less at a fairly steady rate.
Just my view.
Does anybody have the numbers for any other one of the world’s large Patent Offices? I mean, suppose the average everywhere else in the world is between 3 and 4 and the USPTO figures are rising assymptotically to the ROW average? Or (more interesting) suppose the figures everywhere else exhibit an average of around 2.5 and display no gentle rise at all to any higher number of inventors.
I suspect that the rise is driven by corporate life in Asia, where efforts to save face and not offend people results in an upward creep of numbers of inventors named in each new patent application. No harm done! Everybody wins, eh?
Besides, technology has become so advanced and complex that these days that it takes a team to reduce to practice any meaningful, useful and real contribution to any given technical field. A rise in inventor numbers would therefore connote a rise in the proportion, amongst applns filed at the USPTO, of cutting edge contributions to the useful arts. That’s progress!
The idea of “no harm done” flies in the direct face of the requirements of our Sovereign.
Actual inventors only please — there IS an oath involved.
The idea of “no harm done” flies in the direct face of the requirements of our Sovereign.
LOL
You’re so serious, Billy! Very deep stuff.
Brush away the mindless ad hominem, and (yet again), you have contributed Zero here Malcolm.
Can you at least try to say something intelligent?
And no, there is NO such tie from an inflated number of inventors (if as posited, the number is merely inflated) and actual filings and use of patent systems (a Mother and Apple Pie type of good).
Apply a little more critical thinking and a little less bootstrapping.
Lastly, let’s NOT over-emphasize the Lemley-ism of “it takes a village.”
Least of all, until we reciprocate with the recognition that it may also “take a village” on the infringement side and stop requiring single actor mode for direct infringement.
This is beyond absurd. You are a hack.
Your feelings – as vapid as they are – are noted.
Explain to everyone your reasoning. Why does the recognition of the fact that some innovations are conceived of by multiple inventors somehow mandate a loosening of the requirement that direct infringement be performed by a single actor? What’s the logic?
Why not relax the requirement that claims be written as a single sentence, too? Because … multiple inventors! And let’s relax the requirement of one invention per patent. Because … multiple inventors!
Is that how it goes? Seriously?
“Explain to everyone your reasoning.”
Heed your own advice – for most all of your own positions.
As to the logic of applying multiple actor culpability in both directions as opposed to only in a single direction, this is eminently logical, and if you cannot grasp that you have no business being near any public interaction device, let alone a forum concerned with patent law.
As to “Why not relax the requirement that claims be written as a single sentence, too?” – now that you bring up that strawman, why not? Please follow your onw advice and “Explain to everyone your reasoning.”
And yes – seriously. Or are you just going to shuffle this off (yet again) for someone else to actually engage and supply answers?
Just explain the logic Billy. Defend your own horsesh t.
Let me know when you have read (and understand) the logic of the Lemley “it takes a village” to invent.
(it’s kind of important here that you DO understand that)
I don’t need any help from Lemley to understand that increasingly “it takes a village” to invent. Of course it does.
I have no understanding why it should “take a village” to infringe. Why should it?
As far as I know, you and you alone advance that maverick proposition. But you don’t tell us why. Until you do, I will assume that your only reason is that you are feeling deprived of conversation on this blog, and so are trolling it.
MaxDrei,
It is less “should” and more “happens to.”
As innovation enlargens its “scope” and reach to involve the village, oft times it is also more than one actor that is implicated in the innovation.
Are innovations still being done for which single actor modes are perfectly accommodating?
Of course. No one is suggesting anything different.
Are innovation ALSO being done for which the attempts to constrain claim language down to a single actor an “exercise in scrivining” that strains the verse?
Absolutely. Can there be any doubt?
Just as you need not any help from Lemley on the one side, I certainly hope that you need no help on the other.
It is really not all that surprising that those most against patent rights will have the most trouble seeing this natural extension.
I have to say, what a flight of fancy, of unsupported wishful thinking.
Given the ever greater specialisation of expert knowledge in the world of today, and the ever greater maturity of technology, it is ever more likely to require a discussion, an exchange of views between specialists, a collective brainstorm, to conceive of a non-obvious and patentably new contribution to the art.
But it is irrelevant, to the question which corporation it is who is committing a single act of infringement, how many expert human individuals contributed to the conception of the invention that was patented and is now asserted to be infringed by that corporation.
It’s not wishful thinking – but rather simple logic. Try reading my post again.
I will assume that… you are… trolling… .
Given the mountains of evidence underlying this conclusion, I am skeptical that the verb you want is “assume.” I would think that “conclude” or “deduce” or “infer” are each nearer the mark.
Greg, two thoughts:
Long ago, I inferred it, I deduced it, I concluded it. I chose the word “assume” in an attempt to tease out of him a reply, some indication of the “logic” he claims to be expressing.
And what did that achieve? Any revelation of his “logic” in reply? No chance! Only his usual silly admonishment, that we are just not reading his earlier post carefully enough.
What a bunch of whiners who evidence more than anything that they simply do not want to move from their own positions.
By the by, the use of “tr011ing” does not — cannot — describe my contribution here since I added the notion that “it takes a village” is more than just a one-way street description of how innovation has evolved.
Tr011ing is more like what Malcom does: take aimless ad hominem shots that add nothing. I added something and it is THAT something is that which is being “tr011ed.”
For Greg’s sake, he confuses anyone attacking his viewpoint as “tr011ing.” He conflates the proper use of such rhetorical devise as sarcasm and biting humor (which are proper when they are on point and more than mindless) and in fact he has set himself as a f001 for choosing to never engage with someone that has a better grasp of the law and that can show that sarcasm appropriately against viewpoints that he would rather not defend.
MaxDrei, has you heeded what I suggested, you may have realized that I was not advocating some type of “must switch” and more so, the simple realization that the aim of innovative efforts have come to include innovations in which groups partake.
This is not an altogether new phenomenon.
The earlier “treatment” of this phenomenon was to simply write more than one claim set, but the language of each set was set with focus on actions from but one half (or one side of a two sided shared innovation).
This type of writing though is artificial and constrained.
This type of writing is largely not well understood outside of the corner of patent law – and in part – contributes to the notion of Justices in our Sovereign viewing patent writers as devious scriviners.
I draw attention to the fact that these things ARE related, and that one side of that relation HAS seen efforts to have the view of patents change and be “updated.” For what possible reason would not the whole of patents (and patent writing), NOT have this wider view applied?
You seek to dismiss with a cavalier “I have not seen this before” as if applying yourself along a new path of thinking must somehow in and of itself be wrong. You scoff when I have offered you a first step, but you do not take that first step.
How often have I led you along a path to a well of knowledge, only to have you refuse to drink?
Why then do more than offer a first step to you? If you take that first step and show some (any) willingness to actually engage your mental facilities (instead of, as here, cast dispersions at the person rather than the content of the post), perhaps we can advance another step.
You dismiss out of hand relevancy of the nature of innovation encompassing more than a single actor to create, but somehow cannot possibly take more than a single actor to engage in.
You seek to “tease out” all the while you have NO intention of actually engaging on anything that might be “teased out.”
If your definition of “tr011ing” is to post but to do so with no real intention of engaging, are you not doing the very thing that you accuse me of?
To put it another way, here are three questions:
1. How many individuals does it increasingly take, to invent patentable subject matter?
2. How many products (or processes) did it used to take, to infringe a duly issued claim?
3. How many products (or processes) will it take, going forwards, to infringe a claim?
“To put it another way, here are three questions:
1. How many individuals does it increasingly take, to invent patentable subject matter?”
If you has done as requested, you would have seen that the position that I put forth does NOT make this a “must” type of scenario.
The answer to your question then pivots on your use of “does it.” There is NO answer of “does it.” The “does it” occurs across a spectrum, with BOTH individuals as well as teams contributing to innovation.
“2. How many products (or processes) did it used to take, to infringe a duly issued claim?”
Here, you get closer, and yet still miss. You focus TOO MUCH on “infringe a duly issued claim” and miss the actual point presented of WHAT constitutes a “duly issued claim.”
Traditional claim writing has been forced to write innovation IN a single user mode — whether or not the innovation is truly in a single user mode. Note how I provided that claim writing has often taken the “viewpoint” of one actor or another, and that such constrained view writing is part of a larger problem in how the Court (here, the US sovereign) has taken to view claim scrivining.
The larger point here (to which you scoff and do not take ANY steps along a path) is that innovation simply is NOT constrained to the claim format of an individual actor.
“3. How many products (or processes) will it take, going forwards, to infringe a claim?”
Same mindlessness from you. This is just NOT a pertinent question to the actual contribution of my post. That you ASK this type of question shows that you simply have not grasped the point at hand. EVEN IF I were to do more than provide you with an initial step, you show here that you would not even recognize the steps asked of you.
All too often MaxDrei, you show how locked in you are to your own decades of travel around a single block. You have in the past used the phrase “mind willing to understand” and you constantly show the opposite.
You then deign to insult those actually showing thinking.
Justices in our Sovereign viewing patent writers as devious scriviners.
Not all patent writers. Just the writers who are trying to protect ineligible subject matter by writing claims that intentionally obscure the new subject matter (and the nature of the new subject matter) that is being protected.
Malcolm,
Your whining is noted.
I’d love to know if the increase in the number of inventors-per-patent is driven by applications filed by large technology companies.
One issue I have personally seen, that has driven up the number of inventors in many companies, is the rise of incentive programs that provide a monetary bonus to each inventor-employee listed on a patent application (e.g. $5K, $10K, $15K per inventor) once a patent issues. Companies obviously implement these programs to reward engineers for being inventive, but if not managed properly, these programs can result in patents with large numbers of inventors.
This is because (my bias is showing here), many engineers are generally nice and generous people. They want their friends at the company to share the rewards, so they allow their friends to also be listed as inventors even if they weren’t really involved. The social pressure for those friends to reciprocate is huge, and before long, you have webs of socially interconnected engineers at a company who end up being named on basically every invention any of them creates. And because the patent issuance bonus for each inventor is the same (no matter how many inventors are listed), what’s the harm? Before long, you end up seeing very simple, 5-column patents on simple things, that obviously one person invented, with 12 listed inventors. I can’t even tell you how many patents from these companies that I’ve had to due diligence (for acquisition or other purposes), where I interview inventors and they say, “yeah, I wasn’t really involved, it was really all xxxx’s idea.”
Some companies have tried to combat this problem with a “pro rata” incentive system in which a patent issuance gets a fixed reward, and the named inventors split the reward. The greater the number of inventors, the less each inventor gets. That creates potentially more perverse incentives, of naming fewer people and potentially excluding actual inventors. Inventorship issues can be corrected, of course, but leaving inventors off a patent is usually a bigger deal than having extra people listed. And the incentives of a pro rata system can kind of poison your corporate culture…
The better system is usually the non pro-rata model, along with a better trained in-house legal team that conducts interviews to try to root out inventorship collusions (which is not easy if the department is pushing out hundreds of applications per year). In any event, it would be fascinating if it could be determined whether the number of inventors-per-patent is rising more (in a statistically significant way) among the bigger, more prolific patent applicants than smaller companies, within a particular art group. I suspect you’d find some kind of correlation.
You would think that the better way to solve this problem would be to actually keep track of what projects one’s employees are working on, and reward them accordingly.
My experience is that the number of inventors is driven by the large variations of claim scope, from very specific to fairly broad, and the way engineering work is distributed in large companies. It is now rare that an application is filed only with broad claims. Specific claims are usually conceived by junior engineers, and broad claims by experienced engineers.
Update on the PAP update stuff, I haven’t got a hard copy of the changes to the PAP but one of the popa guys made a vid talking about the changes and basically it sounds to me like they tried to put all the grandmaster level stuff. Stuff like proposing amendments to overcome the art, and meeting workflow a bit sooner, and never refusing an interview without good reason (using the arbitrary and capricious standard lol as if most examiners understand that) and several other things will now be in the PAP as just being “fully successful” (and this is apparently the toned down version of the PAP). However they did provide a few extra hours per case to do all this extra stuff. And perhaps a few extra hours on top of that depending on the specifics of the case. There are also a few annoying odds and ends for examiners but they are likely nobody’s big concern.
For me all this new stuff is routine stuff that I do routinely, however I recognize that it is grandmaster level stuff that every joe schmo examiner likely cannot do without extensive training and effort.
Truthfully all this stuff likely should have been in the pap for years (decades) but the existing staff was not brought up to that, either in training or in personal effort to accomplish it. Overall I think they’re likely trying to make the changes a bit too fast, and there should be a year or two phase in time for people. Nobody can come up to these standards at the drop of a hat. And further, there might very well be many examiners “left behind” by these super changes that are truthfully grandmaster level sht, and which should probably be left at being recognized as being grandmaster level, not the “fully successful” for your avg everyday joe examiner. Here in not too long they’ll require examiners to be the examiner and the attorney to boot just to meet “fully successful”. That is probably not appropriate. Any examiner that can do all these things should be recognized as the grandmaster that they are, not merely fully successful. That’s my take. If they successfully pull the whole corps up to grandmaster level then more credit to the leadership. But if a whole swath of examiners suddenly aren’t fully successful then that’s a failure on mgmt’s part to set achievable goals for joe schmoe examiner.
Finally there is a small issue in that they changed things in such a way that if the supervisor doesn’t bother to document your good work then you don’t get credit for it (leaving the door open to favoritism, even presuming you do the good work the spe might not document it and give you a good rating). That should be ameliorated imo in some way but by and large I would suspect mgmt would be more or less fair.
Finally I should note that the current trend towards requiring more and more and more should likely be undone and reversed. Examiners today are doing a whole sht ton compared to some schmoe in the 80’s. Esp. if this new pap goes through and is rigorously enforced. It’s literally not a far jump from what is required now in the pap to requiring them to be an actual attorney at least in terms of prosecution.
A couple of odds and ends are that they took away the “error categories” and made it so that failure to do a sufficient search is now basically straight up an error, and a few other things straight up an error (like ODP/DP rejections) that were previously cat 1 (nobody cares about cat 1 errors). The only area of concern here is that this is supposedly SUBJECTIVELY determined. If the office considers all of these things SUBJECTIVELY determined by mgmt personnel then there is no point to having a pap at all and the SPEs should just give out errors whenever they feel like it. All of these things have to be objectively determinable, and established as objectively determinable before an error is charged, or else there is no point to any of this. Spes can just give out errors like weeee, you get an error, you get an error, you don’t get an error, wheeeee. And the directors can uphold those errors like whee you get an error, you get an error, you don’t get an error, you don’t get an error, you get an error. Ridiculous standard. Preposterous. Not even worth having a standard at all if it is subjective.
Also I should note right fast that the objectivity to the standard should be there literally for the benefit of the agency, not merely to the benefit of the examiners. The only people that lose out with an objective standard would be “bad actor” mgmt individuals trying to charge errors where none should exist. And having the fewer of those in their ranks is in the best interest of the agency as a whole, self-evidently, though I can walk anyone interested through why if they’re not smert enough.
Also I should tell Ben that apparently POPA approved this already by vote. The guy that made the vid did not vote to approve.
There is some serious attitude issues with the guy who made this video.
I would not go so far as saying that he has no valid points – he does.
But by and large, the whining is rather over the top.
I wonder if you realize how contradictory you come across with your “grandmaster” theme juxtaposed to your “this is all routine” line…
Separately, I am reminded of past “you get what you measure” points that I posted.
There will undoubtedly STILL be examiners confusing the measures of how they do their job with WHAT their job is, but at least it appears (and appearance only, since the details are not yet out) that at least someone is recognizing some basic management concepts and are trying to focus on improving examination quality (the only thing that the Office may actually control).
“I wonder if you realize how contradictory you come across with your “grandmaster” theme juxtaposed to your “this is all routine” line…”
It is routine once you are a grandmaster and have studied the “legal arts” (decisions, drafting guides, etc. etc.) for literal years worth of time in your life. If you haven’t then it is not routine. Many, if not the vast majority of examiners have not.
“There will undoubtedly STILL be examiners confusing the measures of how they do their job with WHAT their job is, but at least it appears (and appearance only, since the details are not yet out) that at least someone is recognizing some basic management concepts and are trying to focus on improving examination quality (the only thing that the Office may actually control).”
Probably true. But then again what their actual job is, is largely a matter of decree. Still, one can only decree so many things and expect much of it to actually happen.
“Probably true. But then again what their actual job is, is largely a matter of decree. Still, one can only decree so many things and expect much of it to actually happen.”
Which is why the admonition of “Do your Fn job” applies as much as it does.
You can demand water to not be wet but that’s not going to make it not wet. You can demand a GED worker to do the work of a lawlyer but it isn’t going to make the legal work be golden.
“that at least someone is recognizing some basic management concepts and are trying to focus on improving examination quality”
Also I forgot to tell you I heard that was Donny T, word on the street is that he was perusing PO (I would guess my own posts) and just decided to cram them right in. Probably too direct of an approach, but I suppose it is a start.
It’s more like YOU demanding water not to be wet and me pointing out that the job merely requires that water be recognized as being wet.
NO ONE is demanding an Examiner BE a lawyer. We are demanding that you APPLY the law (and as a member of the executive branch — and that BEING your job — that’s simply not asking for anything special.
“NO ONE is demanding an Examiner BE a lawyer. ”
From what I’m hearing, mgmt practically is, indeed they want examiners to be better than lawlyers. In several ways.
Indeed, they’re demanding examiners be even better than a lawlyer in at least some ways, we’re supposed to first know what is legally sufficient for a given 103, and then on top of that magically know if the SPEs can find a better 2ndary ref to make a 103 with (apparently outside of the search done even) all so that we don’t get a clear error on any given of the hundreds of 103’s done in a year.
And on the whole we also have to not only be able to know what good rejections are legally (like a lawlyer), but we also have to write a legally correct action THAT WILL ADDITIONALLY subjectively please mgmt (who all too often are not trained to the T’s), all so we don’t get a “clear errorlol”. Which determination is apparently now being reduced to nothing but a joke since apparently none of the current mgmt understand the entire foundation of the gubmit making objective determinations. Being able to do those things at the same time is way more complicated than: “herp derp gotta show all da elements” “herp derp non-analogous art!”.
Oh but one thing I did hear and I forgot to tell people about, they may be entirely dropping clear errors for examiners under GS11 (which was in reality a practicality often anyway).
They may want examiners to be better than lawyers AT the job of examining.
Again, that’s nothing more than “do your Fn job.”
“It’s literally not a far jump from what is required now in the pap to requiring them to be an actual attorney at least in terms of prosecution.”
Hardly.
That POPA guy hasn’t the slightest clue what he’s talking about. That video amounts to a lot of blathering, fear mongering, and attacks on management and POPA both.
…link?
You’ll need a Facebook account to view it, but go to link to facebook.com and it is the 40 minute video he posted on 1/23 (Wednesday).
I must have heard it 3rd hand.
Oh. Well. That explains all your rambling.
If you’re a good examiner, there’s nothing to worry about. If you’re not a good examiner, there’s already something to worry about, this just codifies certain programs and issues and eliminates shortcuts (like issuing a bunch of restrictions to game the program).
I don’t think that’s entirely accurate. It looks like the changes will slightly reduce average examining time in high BD arts.
What does the median look like? And what do the mean and median look like if you exclude sole inventor patents? Is the increasing average primarily the result of larger and larger teams, (proportionally) fewer sole inventor patents, or both?
One assumes there’s some practical upper limit to the number of inventors that can feasibly be involved in a single invention, but perhaps we haven’t reached it yet. What does the standard deviation look like over time?
One assumes there’s some practical upper limit to the number of inventors that can feasibly be involved in a single invention, but perhaps we haven’t reached it yet.
Inventorship is such a nebulous area of the law it makes obviousness look like the speed limit.
Let’s say three people A, B and C get listed as inventors on new patent disclosing invention X. A year later there’s an improvement to X, the subject of a second patent, and the improvement was solely the result of D’s work. The claim recites all the elements of the invention in the first patent in addition to D’s contribution. In how many instances do you suppose that the list of inventors on that second application includes only D? Now assume same facts except the improvement is solely the work of C. Whatever the answer to the first question is, you can bet that the number is even lower for the second question. Inventorship listings are driven as much by perks and pride as they are by legal “formalities.”
Speed…
…limit?
Did you mean to say something else?
“ The claim recites all the elements of the invention in the first patent in addition to D’s contribution.”
Are you saying that THAT claim should only list D (in some type of inventor list)?
That seems to have a different inventorship listing mechanism than one in place.
Perhaps if the system were modified such that inventors were listed after each claim, then your musings might make more sense.
(and even if that made more sense, I still don’t see what you were trying to ay with obviousness being a speed limit in relation to inventorship)
It’s almost as if you have formualted a view while thinking that Jepson claim format is a mandatory claim format, and that IF things were forced into that claim format AND IF inventors had to be listed for each claim element outside of the preamble THEN the individual claim elements could be “better” parsed into tiny pieces and each tiny piece then could be “seen” for the obviousness that it represents.
But that’s not how either obviousness or innovation works.
Or did you mean something else?
I see that Malcolm is too busy in his drive-by monologue, internet-style shout down of feelings to actually engage…
. . . meaning fewer and fewer patented inventions from our independent inventors . . .
Why should anyone care? For the life of me I’ve never understood why a slow decrease in the number of inventions filed by one person should make a hill of beans of difference to anybody … except perhaps for some lame club whose dues are paid by “solo” inventors.
Other than that, why should anyone on the planet be concerned by this?
If anything, it shows that people are slowly learning to work together on innovations. Or maybe it shows that people are learning to give credit where credit is due, rather than stealing the “glory” all for themselves. Those are trends we should be grateful for. HOORAY!
“Why should anyone care?”
It should be more than intuitive why anyone should care – leastwise, anyone with ANY sense of American history and US pioneer culture that is.
Those who detest this aspect of American Culture (and detest a strong patent system) and who clamor for patents for monied concerns while attacking protection for innovation modes most accessible by the non-wealthy exhibit so many levels of cognitive dissonance that they appear on patent blogs and create blight.
Case in point being our own Malcolm Mooney.
By the by, you offer some possible alternatives and sure, there may be some half truths to those alternatives, but the larger picture here is one that is more than those halves. You also kick up dust with an attempt to impugn your own profession (club and dues???).
Get into a profession that you do not detest Malcolm. You — and everyone else — will be far better for it.
attacking protection for innovation modes most accessible by the non-wealthy
“Accessible.”
ROTFLMAO
Here in Merka derp derp anyone can buy a skyscraper derp derp!
You obviously do not understand the stultifying irony in your attempted put-down here.
You truly are the Trump of these boards.
No law is stopping those poor people from buying that skyscraper, Billy. Equal access for all!
America is the BEST. Who can deny it? Numero uno. If it weren’t born here, well, it kinda s cks to be you. Same if you had poor parents and had to struggle to reach the top, like Billy’s Presnit Derpderp.
Yet again, you post a reply that is pure nonsense.
Try again. This time, try sober (and try when you are in control of your feelings
)
And the “your president” schtick didn’t work last time. Why would you think it would work this time?
I suppose that if individual inventors are clever enough to invent genuinely new and commercially useful inventions, I would welcome their contributions to the useful arts. I am not surprised, however, that there are fewer and fewer such contributions to be made.
Technologically speaking, most of the low hanging fruit has been picked. We have invented the easy technological advances 100 years ago. The next great technologies require correspondingly more genius to conceive. The requisite level of genius, by and large, is more than can be found in single human individuals, or even pairs of smart people. The sorts of technologies remaining to be invented require teams of smart people working together.
More canards.
This runs to the “Let’s close the patent office as all inventions worth being made have already been made” type of thinking.
As I noted in previous “the sky is falling” type pieces, data skew need be accounted for with appropriate normalization factors.
As I recall, a graph was shown with the percentage of single named inventors dropping.
Critical evaluation easily revealed that the actual number of single named patents ROSE during that time period.
Rose – NOT declined.
It was the relative number that had the decline.
But slack thinking pervades – and then pervades the responses and invites poor policy decisions. ALL of this MORE indicates a susceptibility to propaganda, which only invites such propaganda (patent Tr011s and the “E V I Ls” of enforcing patents in the courts of law anyone?; patents “blocking” others anyone? — hint: blocking others is a form of PROMOTING innovation, as the adage of “Necessity is the mother of invention” comes from the underlying reality of this very core aspect of patents). Slack thinking is a bane to patents, to what patents are for, to innovation protection, and to innovation itself.
This runs to the “Let’s close the patent office as all inventions worth being made have already been made” type of thinking.
Which is a type of thinking held by pretty much nobody.
But I like watching your tiny tiny muscles ripple as you shred that strawman. Very impressive, Billy!
That’s a mighty compliment coming from the king of strawman.
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