Posts Tagged: "patent examiners"

Last week on Monday, November 23, 2009, while so many of us were winding down, clearing off our desks and getting ready for the Thanksgiving Holiday, the United States Patent and Trademark Office announced that the Government of India has granted the agency’s patent examiners access to a new digital database containing a compilation of traditional Indian knowledge. This was…

David Kappos, the Director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office, unveiled yesterday a series of proposals to bring significant change to the examiner “count system” – the methodology for determining the time a patent examiner has to complete a patent examination and how much credit is given for each stage of an examination. In the past I have…

In 2006, Peter Orszag, the current head of the Office of Management and Budget, observed in an article he co-authored for the Brookings Institution: Because the U.S. is at the frontier of modern technological and scientific advances, sustaining economic growth depends substantially on our ability to advance that frontier. Orszag is, of course, correct. Unfortunately, without meaningful and near immediate…

I just spoke with Mark Malek, a patent attorney at the firm I am with – Zies Widerman & Malek.  Mark had an interesting conversation earlier today with a patent examiner who shall remain nameless.  The purpose of the call was to inquire about the status of a particular application that had been filed over 4 years ago and which…

I have been writing for some time about the problems with the United States patent system and my proposed solutions.  As I have continued to write about various issues and work through them with assistance from readers who both send me private e-mails and post comments, I have been getting more and more comments and messages from people on the…

For some time now I have been writing about how a patent stimulus plan would revitalize the economy, but I am all fired up today after a flurry of comments and e-mail exchanges regarding some of my recent blog articles. It is way past time to rethink the patent application process and how patent prosecution is carried out by patent examiners. …

Earlier today I was contacted by the Wall Street Journal asking whether I had heard about the United States Patent and Trademark Office laying off employees in such a way that it would create problems for the Office with respect to keeping up with the growing backlog of patent applications.  From what I can tell this rumor was started by…

The United States Patent & Trademark Office has just released the 2008 Performance and Accountability Report, which is the annual report explaining the activities of the Office during fiscal year 2008.  While so much of the report is a self congratulating look back at what the Dudas Administration believes it effectively achieved over the past year, the report should be anything…