Bonum Certa Men Certa

More Patents Don't Mean More Innovation, Just More Money for Patent Lawyers and Patent Offices

USPTO patent quality has become farcical since David Kappos (IBM) became its Director

Patents Granted
Credit: Patently-O (but annotated)



Summary: A look at the expansion of patent scope (and permissiveness) in the United States and what can really be deduced from that

A patents exploitation firm, Mintz Levin Cohn Ferris Glovsky and Popeo PC, has just written about "Utility Patent Applications" -- a subject we touched here some days ago because of figures released by Patently-O.



"There is not much more innovation in this domain, but a lot more patents each year (see the chart above), so one might rightly suspect there's a bubble in the making.""In almost every U.S. patent suit," said the law firm, "the patentee’s counsel considers how the case could have been facilitated had the patent at issue been drafted and prosecuted differently. These considerations demonstrate that patents should be drafted and prosecuted with an eye toward the possibility of litigation. There have been several landmark decisions in patent cases that directly impact patent prosecution. This article analyzes some of those decisions in chronological order to provide suggestions for a patent prosecutor in drafting or prosecuting a patent application."

Patently-O, in the mean time, continues to write about such patents and says: "The below graph shows the number of UPR patent applications filed over the past several fiscal years (which run from October 1 to September 30), along with a simple projection of the applications for FY 2016. The vast majority of these are utility patent applications."

There is not much more innovation in this domain, but a lot more patents each year (see the chart above), so one might rightly suspect there's a bubble in the making. What good is a patent system like the USPTO if there's little or virtually no quality control? This lack of quality is why many firms ended up seeing their software patents devalued after the decision on Alice, which correctly asserted that many software patents are abstract and should thus be deemed invalid. The same could be said about the financial crisis caused by lack of quality control or slack/lenient criteria (no rigidness) when it comes to mortgages.

"Remember that the original purpose of the patent system was to provide an incentive for publication in exchange for a temporary monopoly."Consider this new comment from Nicola Searle who said “my brain started screaming when I saw “patents as a proxy for innovation.””

It sure angered the crowd of patent lawyers, who wish to believe that the more patents get filed (or more lawsuits), the better off and more innovative society will become.

Remember that the original purpose of the patent system was to provide an incentive for publication in exchange for a temporary monopoly. In light of that long-forgotten premise consider this new post from Patently-O that says: "So far in 2016, the USPTO has issued three patents that claim priority pre-GATT. These three are grandfathered in under the old 17-year-from-issuance patent term because they were filed before June 8, 1995."

"It sure angered the crowd of patent lawyers, who wish to believe that the more patents get filed (or more lawsuits), the better off and more innovative society will become."To give one example, see one patent which was "filed in 1973 but was held under a secrecy order until 2010."

Well, patents were about PUBLICATION originally. If they're not even being published for so many years, how is one supposed to think of the USPTO as seeking to maximise innovation (as opposed to maximising the number of granted patents)?

China, like the US (SIPO like USPTO), has lowered patent quality and now it’s another Texas with a litigation mess, based on those who love patent lawsuits (IAM 'magazine'). One can only hope that Battistelli won't get his way at the EPO and cause similar damage inside Europe, e.g. with the UPC. More on that in our next post...

Recent Techrights' Posts

Slopwatch: Brian Fagioli, Google News, and Other LLM Slopfarms
Why does Google News keep promoting these fake articles?
Links 29/10/2025: Amazon Kept "Data Center Water Use Secret", "Abuse of Power" Against Media
Links for the day
Gemini Links 29/10/2025: "My Hardware Specs" and "Goodbye Debian…"
Links for the day
EPO Cocainegate: Feedback and Clarifications
Part III will come out soon
Links 29/10/2025: "US Military Is Destroying the Planet Beyond Imagination" and Boat Strikes Deemed Unlawful
Links for the day
Quality Comes First (Techrights Search)
It's generally working already, but we wish to polish it some more
Techrights Party Countdown
Late next week we'll be holding a party near our home
European Parliament and Council Directive on Privacy is Vanishing
"edited / censored some time more recently"
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, October 28, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, October 28, 2025
Slopwatch: The March of Slopfarms, From UbuntuPIT to Linux Journal and to Various Fake Sites Still Promoted by Google News
It's so worrying to see what the Web has become
Links 29/10/2025: CISA, Ukraine, and Amazon Problems
Links for the day
[Teaser] The EPO's Spokesperson, a Cocaine User, Fancies Young Women
How's that for "optics" in the EU and Europe's second-largest institution?
How Will António Campinos Respond to the EPO's 'Cocainegate'?
That's the same thing we saw and still see when the press deals with enablers and partners of Jeffrey Epstein
Join Us Now and Share the News - Part IV: There Cannot be Free Software Without Free Press and Free Information
One day, one can hope, more people will recognise that for Software Freedom we need free press and free thinkers
Join Us Now and Share the News - Part III: Principled Stance Is Never Cheap
Protecting the truth and insisting that the general public is made aware of things that really happened isn't cheap
Join Us Now and Share the News - Part II: Because Scarcity of Accurate Information Breeds Collective Ignorance
we too will strive to share information that's aggressively suppressed
Gemini Links 28/10/2025: More New Arrivals at Geminispace, xkcd on "Document Forgery"
Links for the day
Join Us Now and Share the News - Part I: Defence of the Truth
This year we make a very strong, firm statement for truth, even if that means explaining our work to the top media judge in the country
Links 28/10/2025: Meta and Fentanylware (CheeTok) Age-Restricted Down Under, "Britain Needs China’s Money"
Links for the day
Links 28/10/2025: Mass Layoffs at Amazon and Charter to Cut 1,200 Jobs
Links for the day
The Cocaine Patent Office - Part II: The Person Who Planted Paid-for Fake News for the European Patent Office (EPO) is a Cocaine User, Friend of António Campinos, Now on Record as Having Been Arrested
Background: High-level manager at the European Patent Office caught in public with cocaine, arrested
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, October 27, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, October 27, 2025
Google News Drowning in Slop (and Slopfarms That Hijack About Half the Results)
Google News seems to be drowning in this stuff
Gemini Links 28/10/2025: "How to Maximize Your Positive Impact" and ASCII Art and Artist Attribution
Links for the day
PETA and Activism
Being staff or volunteer in PETA isn't easy
Big Blue, Huge Debt
debt will soar again
Links 27/10/2025: Mass Surveillance Sold as "AI", People Reluctant to Lose Physical Media
Links for the day
Parties and Milestones Again
we've begun putting up about 40 balloons
Techrights' 19th Anniversary: Bronze
Time to go back to preparing for this anniversary
Our Latest European Patent Office (EPO) Series Will Last Several Weeks, Will Ask the EPO Management and the European Union (EU) Very Difficult Questions
If nobody loses a job (or jobs) over this, then the EU basically became no better than Colombia or Nicaragua
Slopwatch: LinuxSecurity, UbuntuPIT, Brian Fagioli, and Google News
We focus on stories that are fake or LLM slop that disguises itself as "news" about Linux
Links 27/10/2025: Wikipedia Vandalism, Bruce Perens Opens up on Childhood
Links for the day
This Site Could Not be Done by LLMs Even If It Wanted to (Because It's Not a Parrot of What Other Sites Say)
LLMs have no knowledge or deep understanding
Microsoft is Disloyal Towards Its Most Loyal Employees
Against its most faithful enablers
19 Years, No Censorship
No factual information is ever going to be removed, more so if it is in the public interest
We Are Not a Conventional Site, That's Why They Hate (or Love) Us
Throughout the week this week we'll be focusing on the EPO
Following the Line of Cocaine All the Way to the Top
Even a million denials and spin-doctoring won't distract from the core issue
The Cocaine Patent Office - Part I: António Campinos Brought Corruption and Nepotism to the EPO, Then Came the Cocaine
High-level manager at the European Patent Office (EPO) caught in public with cocaine, the Office has some answering to do
Purchasing/Possessing Computers Isn't the Same as Controlling Computers
Let's strive to put computers back under the control of their users, no matter who purchased these (usually the users)
Gemini Links 27/10/2025: Alhena 5.4.3 and Fixing Bash
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, October 26, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, October 26, 2025
Thankfully We've Made Copies of More Interesting Data From statCounter
If statCounter (the Web site or the 'webapp') vanished overnight, we'd still have something left of it
More Silent Layoffs at IBM/Red Hat
when the media counts such layoffs or presents tallies the numbers are very incomplete