Posts Tagged: "Hirshfeld interview"

Drew HIRSHFELD: ”One thing that really can move the ball toward a higher quality patent is again the clarity of the record, and the amount of information that’s in there so that third parties can really tell what the patent was about. So quality has, as you’ve identified before, many ways to look at it. But when I leave this position, whenever that time is, certainly if I can have a more clear record, more full explanations on the record, I think the system would be in a better place and that is one of my goals.”

HIRSHFELD: “[Y]ou caught my attention with quality means we issue a few patents. So let me address that first. We’ve always focused on quality as far as I’ve been here. What we have been asked to do in recent years is ask how can we take a more “out of the box” approach to quality, right? Is there anything that we could be doing with the goal of continuous improvement? And so to me that’s an absolutely wonderful position to be in for anybody asking how can you do your job better. And so I don’t look at quality as saying we want to issue more patents or less patents, we want to do a better job, a good job in the process as we’re moving forward. Things like clarity of the record. That does not mean we’re going to issue more or less, it means that we’re going to take extra steps to make sure we’re on the same page as the applicant. Or make sure we’re creating a good record so that a third party down the road can evaluate the application history, the prosecution history and tell exactly what took place. Certainly there is not a sentiment to try to reject more or less. Our goal is to do what the courts are asking us to do but we want to make sure that we’re thinking about all the ways we can do that in the most effective, efficient and clear way.”