US Patent office Shredding Patents

["Nick Fleming" <Nick@bigfatpanda.fsnet.co.uk>]

I dont know if anyone else has seen
this story at washingtonpost.com (from article via slashdot)
about the U.S. Patent office wishing to shred (literally)
its paper documentation.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A64178-2002Aug26.html

I don't know about any of you, but I've always found
it a good idea to keep hardcopy versions of my most
important documents. They last longer, dont require
any power to read and I will still be able to read them
100 years from now (wish I could say the same for
my CD archives).
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From the article:

A leading intellectual property interest group is suing the U.S. Patent and
Trademark Office in a last-minute bid to save millions of paper documents
destined for the trash heap under the agency's e-government initiative.

The National Intellectual Property Researchers Association filed the suit in
federal court Friday, saying the hard-copy patent and trademark collections
remain critical for researchers because the PTO's electronic database is
full of holes and inaccuracies.

"We fully understand and support the PTO's eventual goal of a paperless
system," NIPRA President James Cottone said in a statement. "However, the
abrupt elimination of the PTO's well-maintained and reliable paper
collection makes no sense at this time, given the many bugs remaining in the
database."

Fresh from its transition to an electronic filing system, the PTO is
embarking upon a controversial plan to dispose of an estimated 135 million
documents - literally tons of paper - chronicling more than 200 years of
innovation. The agency, which sees more than 6,000 new patent and trademark
applications each week, is moving to an electronic document system to reduce
costs and to tackle a backlog of filings.

Currently, just over 30 percent of trademark applications are filed
electronically, though the agency will require e-filing for all trademarks
by 2004. The PTO is also considering a similar mandate for patent
applications.

While the PTO has received heaps of praise for its modernization effort,
many patent and trademark research attorneys have complained that graphic
images required in filings are not rendered accurately with computer-imaging
applications, and that trademarks often are not indexed well enough in the
new electronic system to allow for an accurate and thorough search.

In a study released a study earlier this summer, NIPRA said nearly half of
the 4,000 trademark applications filed within a single week last year were
assigned incorrect search codes or contained illegible or missing images.
The group maintains that the PTO's plan to rely solely on its electronic
search database means examiners may overlook important trademarks that have
already been granted, an oversight that could be costly for many upstart
businesses.

A PTO spokesperson declined to comment for this story. A much smaller study
conducted by the PTO put the error rate at nearly 20 percent.

In certifying the proposal to Congress, PTO Undersecretary James Rogan
called the error rates "unacceptable," but said the agency was quickly
upgrading its system and that the plan would "not negatively impact the
public."

In its report to Congress, the PTO said it could begin destroying the
documents as early as today. Yet, in a memo distributed throughout PTO
facilities today, the agency said it would delay any plans to do so while it
negotiates with the National Intellectual Property Law Institute (NIPLI), a
local nonprofit that has offered to assume control over the massive cache of
archived patent and trademarkdocuments.

NIPLI is funded in part by some of the world's largest intellectual property
grantees, including IBM Corp., Kodak, Xerox and Mobile Oil, among others.

"We have an agreement to take over the documents, and we have every
intention of living up to our side of the agreement," said NLPLI President
James P. Chandler
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Regards,

Nick.