Law.com: PTO [U.S. Patent Office] Announces Outsourcing Proposal

[ColonelTom]

The march towards privatization of all government functions continues...

Excerpts below from article on law.com:

Patent examiners will lose a big chunk of their workload -- searching for prior art related to applications -- under a proposal announced Monday by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

Along with the job of examining applications, patent examiners currently search for prior art. PTO Director James Rogan said in a news conference that under his plan, applicants would have searches done by one of four sources: a private outside contractor; the patent office of another country; a country certified to do searches under the Patent Cooperation Treaty; or the PTO.

The PTO, however, will limit its searches to those for small, independent inventors.

Rogan said the goal of the plan is to reduce the length of time applications are pending at the agency from the current average of more than two years to 18 months by 2008, and to make the patent and trademark process almost entirely electronic.

Over a period of five years, the program will reduce the PTO's costs by $500 million, Rogan said.

But critics worry that outsourcing will result in inconsistent quality and may lead to an abuse of the system.

* * *

Rogan says the new patent program is designed to move the PTO from a one-size-fits-all process to a four-track examination process that "leverages search results of other organizations and permits applicants to have freedom of choice in the timing of the processing of their applications."

* * *

The outsourcing of prior art searches and deferral of examinations are potentially the most controversial aspects of the plan, patent attorneys say. The details of the strategic plan were not available Monday afternoon.

The agency expects to receive 340,000 patent applications this year, which will join a backlog of 408,000 applications. The office has about 3,400 patent examiners and plans to hire 950 this year. Rogan said a reduction in patent searches by the PTO would eliminate the need to hire an additional 2,500 examiners through 2008.

* * *

David Stevens, a patent prosecutor and name partner at San Jose, Calif.'s Stevens & Westberg, said, "I think quality control is a bigger issue than conflict of interest. If searching is done exclusively by the PTO, you at least get the same quality, since it is managed fairly uniformly. If it is outsourced, it is difficult -- if not impossible -- to monitor the quality."

* * *

While the PTO has been swamped with patent applications, the agency has seen a sharp decline in trademark applications. As a result, Rogan told trademark examiners last week that he would be laying off 135 of the PTO's 383 trademark examiners effective Sept. 30.

"Last year new applications dropped 21 percent, which was the largest annual decrease ever," Rogan wrote in an e-mail message to examiners. "This year looks worse: The drop in filings will give us a 33 percent decrease in filings over the last two years. ... There simply is insufficient work to retain a staff of 383 attorneys when we only have enough work for about 248 of them."

[Cassandra]

1. What's to prevent...

a foreign government from ripping off good ideas before they are patented? Or a private company selling them?

[Kagemusha]

4. Being sued later and having no legal leg to stand on.

Um, the fact is, as long as someone knows about an idea after it first comes out and (hopefully) a patent has been applied for, this has always been the only redress. Although in this case there's a moral argument for it, take third world countries threatening to authorize private pharmaceutical firms to sell generic drugs subject to previously legal patents voided by those nations for perceived patent abuse. Short of the US Military threatening the nation there's not much in terms of recourse but suing in that nation's own courts or something like that. Patents aren't pretty.

[BR_Parkway]

2. All Shrub talk about helping small business and 21% FEWER

applications for trademarks? Meanwhile, the big rich companies gobble each other up in complex stock and paper transactions, layoff 'duplicated' employees, and declare a dividend.

[Javaman]

3. "hello, you have reached the call center for the U.S. Government..."

Operator: hello, how may I help you?

U.S.Plebe: I want to lodge a complaint with my senator.

Operator: what providence is your senator located?

U.S.Plebe: Providence?

Operator: yes, yes, come on now, the providence?

U.S.Plebe: I don't know but the last time I checked we had states...

Operator: oh yes, my mistake, I'm sorry, what state is your member of Parliament located in?

U.S.Plebe: Member of Parl...what state are you located in?

Operator: state? I'm completely calm, I assure you.

U.S.Plebe: No, I mean your location, were is your calling center?

Operator: New Delhi, why?

U.S.Plebe: let me get this straight, you are an operator for the U.S. Government located in India???

Operator: Yes, how can I help you?

U.S.Plebe: I give up.

Operator: Thank you, call again.

[kenny blankenship]

5. After all, rubberstamping is something that foreigners can do just as well

[ColonelTom]

6. Applications by big corporations will be outsourced first

In other words, prior-art review for the big-money patents will be farmed out to private companies. I can't see any possibility for abuse there. :sarcasm:

[rucky]

7. this is criminal

the potential for abuse is staggering - trusting your propietary rights to a corporation.

watch small inventors' patent apps get refused and watch a big corporation come out with your invention a short time later. not that it doesn't happen now, but do we really need to help it along?

[brentspeak]

8. Rogan was a Bush appointee

Served one term as a Republican congressman for California, where his "service" consisted of being one of the managers who conducted impeachment meetings against Clinton. That didn't impress California voters, and they booted Rogan from office in 2000. But he wasn't unemployed for long, as Bush made him PTO head in 2001.