[Patents] New WIPO drive for unlimited patentability and limits on patent quality

[phm@a2e.de (PILCH Hartmut)]

> > The patent system needs a whole
> > bureaucracy, which by itself is already inert and subject to normal
> > bureaucratic decay processes.
>
> > Moreover, if the examination
> > system could be scrapped altogether and replaced by a system of public
> > claim refutal competition, the bureaucracy would go away and with it most
> > of the rules that now need to be "harmonized".
>
> The idea of claim refutal has too many drawbacks. Imagine that two competing
> laboratories are researching a medicine.

Claim refutal is exactly what is being done now.  When two competing
laboratories are researching, one gets the patent and the other opposes
(refutes claims). Or they find some way to strike a deal.  And formal
examination doesn't exist in all countries.  It could be replaced without
much loss and probably with a lot of gain by a more competition based
refutal game with more incentives for refutal.

> Furthermore, it is not necessary. Patent offices are very bureaucratic
> because their examiners are not quite bright.
...
The examiners aren't necessarily bad.  But lowering the brightness
requirement makes any bureaucracy work better.

Anyway I am not talking about a recipe for solving the problem of trivial
patents.

-phm