Bonum Certa Men Certa

Almost Everything That the Government Accountability Office Says is Applicable to the EPO

Without patent quality, convergence is reached near registration/filing rather than proper examination (but with a hefty price tag)

On quality
I left my bank when it bragged about giving a mortgage to nine out of ten applicants



Summary: The Government Accountability Office in the United States produces reports which can serve as a timely warning sign to the European Patent Office, where patent quality is rapidly declining in order to meet 'production' goals

THE USPTO has been scrutinised here for a number of years primarily because of patent quality (or lack thereof). Few people can honestly say that it's hard to get granted a patent at the USPTO (there are like 10 million of them and one single company like IBM can gain 7,355 patents in just one year). Recent figures suggest that eventually 92% of applications are "successful", so what kind of quality control is that? Engineers at Sun once joked about how silly an application can be accepted and even competed over this as applicants (to see who gets the stupidest patent claims through the examiners). A lot of granted patents are simply dubious, but small companies would not be able to afford challenging them in court (or it would be a lot more expensive than simply settling).



"When the Government Accountability Office (GAO) asks for improvement in patent quality it also alludes to patent scope and software patents explicitly."Matt Levy, who habitually complains about patent trolls and even about software patents (in his more recent articles), has just mentioned the US Government Accountability Office's rant about US patent quality (which we first wrote about last week). He says [1, 2] that "[e]ven if you’re not a patent lawyer, you’ve probably noticed that patents have been in the news more. The growing problem of patent trolls, companies who make their money by suing other companies for patent infringement, has been the primary reason. Patent trolls now account for nearly two-thirds of all patent infringement lawsuits, draining billions of dollars away from productive companies."

According to this article (behind paywall) a "US High Court Restores Treble Damages For Patent Infringement," which means that things are not necessarily improving.

When the Government Accountability Office (GAO) asks for improvement in patent quality it also alludes to patent scope and software patents explicitly. Benjamin Henrion said that "improving quality does not mean much for the average programmer, just more spam." Well, in practice, raising the bar may mean that few software patents would be authorised at all (both at the courts and the patent office). That's definitely a step forward. IBM's Manny Schecter, a longtime proponent of software patents, was yammering that: "Backlog easy to measure, quality not, but..."

Backlog depends on the number of examiners or the lenience of examination. There are some correlations there and under David Kappos, who had joined from IBM, the USPTO tackled backlog by just granting lots of things faster (basically the same error Battistelli and his goons make at the EPO).

Here is a good article about the GAO report. It says: "The Patent and Trademark Office, at a time of rising lawsuits charging patent infringements, needs to improve quality and better monitor examiners’ work, a watchdog found.

"This is not a sign of innovation. Quite the contrary.""In a pair of reports and staff survey released on Wednesday, the Government Accountability Office said that patent examiners report being pressed for time as they process patent applications without a consistent and clear definition of quality.

"“District court filings of new patent infringement lawsuits increased from about 2,000 in 2007 to more than 5,000 in 2015, while the number of defendants named in these lawsuits increased from 5,000 to 8,000 over the same period,” GAO wrote in one report addressing quality in intellectual property protections."

This is not a sign of innovation. Quite the contrary. A patent trolls expert (he conducted academic studies on the subject), Professor James Bessen, said: "The GAO finds Patent Office issues 1000s of "unclear & overly broad" patents, causing excessive litigation" ("Stop issuing Software Patents & there wouldn't be a backlog" was one response to this).

"Most disputes concern new computer technology and software," according to another new article about the GAO study/reports. Just like in the EPO, the US office is "focusing too much on the timeliness of reviews, customer service and “process or production goals” rather than quality."

It's added that "[e]xaminers are rated largely on their production, auditors said, and they are given different times" and "GAO recommended that the agency define what is a good patent, update its performance goals for reviewers" (the same should be done at the EPO).

Recent Techrights' Posts

Slopwatch: LinuxSecurity, UbuntuPIT, and Google News
We've also just noticed more slop from UbuntuPIT
Microsoft Windows is No Longer an Operating System, It's Surveillance Project
Why is this even legal to preload on PCs outside the US?
 
The Slop Song
The train wreck marches on
LLM Slop/Advanced Plagiarism Flooding the Zone With Capital That Does Not Exist
Many publishers out there still participate in this bubble instead of calling it what it is
Links 09/10/2025: Sacked Microsoft Workers Make "Sackbird", IBM Taps CockroachDB for PostgreSQL
Links for the day
"Happy Hacking Day" Richard Stallman Talk This Afternoon (From 14:00 to 16:00) at Haaga-Helia University in Pasila
Richard Stallman in Helsinki, Finland
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, October 08, 2025
IRC logs for Wednesday, October 08, 2025
Links 09/10/2025: Impact of Microsoft Layoffs, More Data Breaches
Links for the day
Gemini Links 09/10/2025: Autumn Blues and C IRC Bot
Links for the day
Slopwatch Appreciated by Real Authors of GNU/Linux Articles
We do try to keep on top of those things
Upgraded R.R.R.R.R.R. Today
The Web of 2025 is full of garbage, not limited to slopfarms
Freedom From Proprietary Prisons
Forking always an option
IBM's Watson Died in 1956, Now Watson Dies Again
IBM is becoming just a reseller of GAFAM and other stuff
Microsoft Says That Constant Mass Layoffs Are Success, the Media Isn't Buying This Microsoft Narrative Anymore
If people in the media feel an obligation to repeat whatever lies Microsoft tells, what point will there be to the media?
Links 08/10/2025: "Mali Puts Free Speech on Trial" And Apple Enforces Dictatorship
Links for the day
Links 08/10/2025: ‘Death to Spotify’ and Law to Ban Loud Commercials on Streaming (Dis)Services
Links for the day
Links 08/10/2025: Real Innovation and Nina.chat is Dead
Links for the day
Links 08/10/2025: Y2K38 Bug is a Vulnerability, Chat Control in Europe a Threat
Links for the day
How and Why Once-Legitimate Sites Turn Into Slopfarms
Many sites will go offline and many social control networks will shut down once they realise or even openly admit they spend money and time gardening a bunch of bots and slop
UbuntuPIT Became a Slopfarm and Gnoppix Tarnishes Its Own Brand With Slop
It fits all the characteristics of mildly-edited (if at all) slop
Slopwatch: Linux Journal and Other Slopfarms
GAFAM needs to go the way of the dodo
Gemini Links 08/10/2025: "Seek Seek Revolution" and Gradient Backgrounds
Links for the day
Qualcomm Arduino Takes Aim at Raspberry Pi
Qualcomm is a Microsoft partner
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, October 07, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, October 07, 2025
Stagnation of the Economy and What Free Software Can (or Could) Do For It
If your economic model is based on a pyramid of lies, it won't last very long
Social Control Media is Sinking
it would rightly seem like the era of centralised "social" sites (they're not social, they're about controlling the users) is ending, not overnight but gradually
Participation in Cancel Culture Detrimental to One's Career
A cautionary tale
Passion Wins
we've increased the number of birds we feed to 100+
How Solderpunk and Sean Conner Started Gemini Protocol (and, Collectively, Geminispace) Back in 2019
Based on the "official" history
Arduino is Now a Patent Bully (Qualcomm)
Qualcomm has just bought Arduino
Many Years of Microsoft Cancellations and Faked (Acquired) Revenue "Growth"
XBox is basically the "next Skype"
The Comment TheLayoff.com Has Just Censored for Criticising a Ridiculous Puff Piece of IBM Management
If comments get censored for their "style" rather than their substance, then society will be worse off
The Power of Writing Down Facts
The more we write and publish, the more people will know what happened
Microsoft's Non-Denying Denial About XBox's Death is Already Being Shattered to Pieces
Like Microsoft's 'open' 'hey hi', heralding meaningless non-committing agreements with AMD is little more than vapourware
Slopwatch: UbuntuPIT Joins the Slopfarms Club
Slopfarms gonna slop
Links 07/10/2025: Privacy at Risk, GAFAM Remains Off the Hook
Links for the day
Gemini Links 07/10/2025: Modern Retro Console Idea and Batch vs Bash
Links for the day
Links 07/10/2025: International Criminal Court (ICC) Convicts Ali Kushayb; Moroccan Imprisoned for 'Offensive' Shirt
Links for the day
Links 07/10/2025: EU' Chat Control is Back, US Cracks Down on Democracy
Links for the day
Techrights Pursues Justice and Truth Because, Without Those, Society Descends Into Chaos
most people reject dogma and pseudoscience
Upcoming Talks by Richard Stallman in Helsinki, Göteborg, and Rome
Join with him and share the software
Something Bad is Happening in the Open Source Initiative (OSI)
The latest OSI blog post is from a Microsoft operative and a few weeks ago the Executive Director left
TLS 1.3 Dominates Geminispace (99% of Known Capsules)
it's nowadays safe to assume almost every capsule can handle TLS 1.3
Why soylentnews.org Has Been Having Technical Difficulties Lately
The network has been going up and down quite a lot this past week
A Statement Against Violence
The facts are on our side
They've Run Out of Things to Rebrand or Label as "AI"
The next few years will be interesting because if Microsoft lays off tens of thousands of workers each year, there won't be much left except mountains of debt and dying brands
The Register MS is Still Being Paid to Participate in the "AI" Ponzi Scheme Which Will Crash the Economy
The Register MS is hoping to get lucky by tricking people into a scam
Richard Stallman Confirms His Talk in Göteborg This Coming Friday
"The hosts say that the list will not be given to the state"
Most of the "Linux" Results This Morning in Google News Are LLM Slop From the Same Slopfarm, Plagiarising Phoronix
The main question is, does Google even care at this point?
Gemini Links 07/10/2025: Civil War and "Goodbye Web"
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, October 06, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, October 06, 2025