The inversive spin that needs tackling, calling what's weak "strong"

Summary: The concept of patent strength is being distorted in all sorts of ways and acronyms like IPR still being used not to describe the process by which bad patents get eliminated but to spread propaganda like 'intellectual' 'property' 'rights'

THE ARRIVAL of Alice four years ago meant that software patents, even those that had been granted by the USPTO prior to Alice, were on shaky ground. If used litigiously, courts would typically reject these and if the Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) got 'called in' in the form of an inter partes review (IPR) or petition, then too it would happen. Appealing decisions to the Federal Circuit would have yielded a similar outcome. So here we are in 2018; the USPTO continues to grant some software patents, as we shall show in a moment (a later post), albeit some are disguised thinly using semantic tricks and buzzwords.

"Patent strengthening would mean actually raising the quality of patents, but this isn't what Watchtroll has in mind."Inter partes reviews are the real "IPRs". But patent maximalists' sites like Managing IP [sic] speak of "Alibaba’s IPR report, which isn't what it sounds like. Stop misusing propaganda terms like IPR as in 'intellectual' 'property' 'rights' (there's nothing intellectual about them, they're definitely not property and unlike many things, such as free speech, they're not rights but a temporary monopoly or a privilege). Watchtroll has already come up with this nonsense about "Patent Strengthening" (they mean "strengthening" not in the same sense the STRONGER Patent Act meant it). To quote:

Patent strengthening is the term we use to refer to the process of achieving the greatest potential for value from a patent during the prosecution – before a patent is even granted.

Patent strengthening would mean actually raising the quality of patents, but this isn't what Watchtroll has in mind. The Office knows that it ought to mean improving patent quality, i.e. fewer patents, but they don't want to go down that path. Patent maximalists still call the shots at the Office, albeit not in courts or at PTAB. ⬆