Summary: Figureheads of the patent microcosm (firms that profit from patent chaos) are still meddling in affairs which they intentionally mis-portray, conflating innovation with number of patents and so on

THE new Director of the USPTO completes nearly a week in his new job. He has not said a word yet, not in his capacity as Director anyway. Plenty of people speak (or preach) to him, hoping to influence him on policy. IAM, for instance, has just noted: "Patents just get one mention in Pres. Trump's new budget (see p.29) https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/budget-fy2019.pdf"

"We are generally seeing the Federal Circuit frequently (about 80% of the time) ruling in favour of PTAB, which falls under the wing of the USPTO."This is consistent with what we saw before. Trump, Gorsuch (Trump's SCOTUS pick) and others barely say anything about patents. It's a mystery. Maybe this whole administration just does't give a damn about patents, it only speaks of "China" and "IP" in rather vague terms. Either way, Josh Landau (CCIA) has just "said it like it is" in his long blog post about the misinformation that's relying on a Chamber of Commerce "index" (covered in here a few days ago). His opening statement goes like this:

The Chamber of Commerce produces a yearly ranking of intellectual property systems around the world. This year, they dropped the U.S. patent system to 12th. If I thought their rankings had any merit, I might be concerned by this change. Unfortunately, their analysis is flawed and based on complete misrepresentations of reality.

Earlier this week Watchtroll collated and published texts from the patent microcosm. He wants to tell Iancu (also of the patent microcosm) what to do to the Office. No engineers offer their input; it's basically a bunch of law firms, just like the one Iancu came from.

Iancu is now inheriting cases formally filed against the interim head of the Office (these are cases against the Office, but for formal reasons a person, such as Michelle Lee, gets specified). One such case is Actelion Pharmaceuticals, Ltd. v Matal -- a case which was recently explained as followed:

The Federal Circuit therefore concluded that the USPTO did not err in calculating a 40-day PTA for the '675 patent under ۤ 154(b)(1)(A)(i)(II), and affirmed the District Court's decision granting summary judgment in favor of the USPTO.

We are generally seeing the Federal Circuit frequently (about 80% of the time) ruling in favour of PTAB, which falls under the wing of the USPTO. In this particular case, which does not involve PTAB, we are seeing this too.

We certainly hope that the Office and the courts will remain in cohesion, loosely indicating that the Office makes the correct decisions (as per judges). The patent microcosm has long attempted to subvert the Office, hoping it would garner more litigation and feuds (which they profit from).

Granting patents just for the sake of granting more of them is almost always a mistake. ⬆