From srctran@world.std.com  Thu Sep 27 17:42:41 2001
From: srctran@world.std.com (Gregory Aharonian)
Date: Thu, 27 Sep 2001 12:42:41 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [Patents] Is it worth improving PTO quality?
Message-ID: <200109271642.MAA05394@world.std.com>

>Another interesting paper by Mark Lemley:
>... [He argues spending to improve PTO quality is not worth it.]

Mark Lemley is an excellent IP lawyer with much experience analyzing
legal problems.  But patent quality is mostly a logistics problem
with regards to prior art searching, something Mark has little experience
with, which renders the conclusions of his paper suspect.  The quality
of issued patents can be improved significantly without an undue cost
burden on applicants.  The problem isn't that it can't be done - it can
be (if the improvements are implemented in the patent offices by
competent managers and contractors), but rather that neither Congress
nor the patent bar (and their corporate clients) have yet to take patent
quality seriously yet.

So to be honest, I am tired of lawyers saying quality can't be improved,
especially when no one has really tried yet to fix the system.  And if
you fixed the system, a lot of these idiotic software patents (and
idiotic patents in other fields of technology) would never issue and
be the subject of the flames we all love to issue when we see them.

Greg Aharonian


