Bonum Certa Men Certa

U.S. Patent and Trademark Office Under Andrei Iancu Subjected to an Assault on Patent Quality

Even scholarly journals are being 'infiltrated' by the litigation giants

Andrei Iancu



Summary: Donald Trump has let the litigation industry 'govern' itself at the USPTO; all it has accomplished so far is even greater divergence between USPTO determinations and those of actual courts (which means that the USPTO does not follow the law, there's a state of lawlessness)

THE USPTO isn't coping with demand for patent quality. Instead it's trying to cope with demand for patents; the more, the merrier?



Emulation patents by Sony have been mentioned a lot on Sunday [1, 2, 3] and Apple patent propaganda sites which treat every patent from Apple like it's the digital "second coming" celebrated a patent application on user interface navigation just a few hours ago. It sounds like another bunch of software patents ascribed to a "device". What gives? When will we see a patent office that prioritises public interest rather than massive corporations like Sony and Apple? Who does this office really serve? It obviously doesn't help that its new Director comes from the litigation 'industry'.

"It obviously doesn't help that its new Director comes from the litigation 'industry'."We don't suppose patent lawyers like Techrights and we're fine with that. We don't try to collectively or personally insult them, we just make our observations based on the premise that patents were created (came into existence centuries ago) for the purpose of science, not just the purpose of litigation. Some patent lawyers are honest people -- sometimes honest enough to the point of abandoning the occupation. Some people go the other way. Our general advice to patent lawyers, especially in the current climate, is get a real job, people, create something rather than "facilitate litigation" with threatening letters and legal attacks that are costly to both sides (those who actually create things). World Intellectual Property Review published the following some days ago:

Baltzer’s practice focuses on patent litigation in the fields of biotechnology, electronics, and data processing systems.


Many data processing systems are purely software-defined now, hence the underlying patents would be software patents. How about this from World Intellectual Property Review (same day more or less)? It's about a man who used to write software but nowadays attacks (or contrariwise defends) coders with/from patent litigation through his new employer. Who needs this nonsense? "He has more than two decades of experience in patent law," it says, "having spent 16 years at Seed IP and five years at Perkins Coie. Before practising law, he worked as a software engineer for six years."

So he moved from actually creating software to litigating over software. What a failure.

"So he moved from actually creating software to litigating over software. What a failure."Unfortunately, many people out there think that this is acceptable. They're being brainwashed. Here we have "Recent U.S. Court Decisions and Developments Affecting Licensing" by John Paul and D. Brian Kacedon. Patent maximalists from Finnegan, Henderson, Farabow, Garrett & Dunner LLP are writing 'scholarly' papers by which to push their agenda, which is financial (lawsuits). So even journals, not just the media, get taken over by the litigation 'industry'. Over at Washington Law Review, which one might expect to target lawyers, another evidence of such a thing emerges. “Legislators and industry leaders claim that patent strength in the United States has declined,” they claim, but this is nonsense! Those ‘industry’ ‘leaders’ are law firms that want more lawsuits!

Guess who wrote this paper; it's law firms pushing 'scholarly' papers loaded with lies. It's Steven Udick (Skiermont Derby LLP) helped by Gregory Day (University of Georgia - C. Herman and Mary Virginia Terry College of Business). They suggest "Offshoring Patent Law" in their title! As in sending it to Iancu or law firms' interests? Letting the executive become legislator too? From the abstract:

Legislators and industry leaders claim that patent strength in the United States has declined, causing firms to innovate in foreign countries. However, scholarship has largely dismissed the theory that foreign patents have any effect on where firms invent, considering that patent law is bound by strict territorial limitations (as a result, one cannot strengthen their patent protection by innovating abroad). In essence, then, industry leaders are deeply divided from scholarship about whether innovative firms seek out jurisdictions offering stronger patent rights, affecting the rate of innovation.


This is just think tank-type propaganda disguised as academic paper. Check the authors' affiliation. Things have gotten so bad that these law firms not only dominate public/private forums but also the media (Web, TV etc.) and literature. Patent Docs has just advertised another 'think tank' of the Intellectual Property Owners Association (IPO), a front group that lobbies the above people for software patents. Patent Docs also mentioned this from the USPTO:

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office will be offering the next webinar in its Patent Quality Chat webinar series from 12:00 to 1:00 pm (ET) on October 9, 2018.


A "Patent Quality Chat" (all capitalised) does not ensure quality; it's like Battistelli's "Working Party on Quality," which is a "Ministry of Truth"-type of façade.

Patent quality is something that the USPTO under its new Director does not care about; he actively tries to lower quality, seeing that the number of granted patents declined this year (not just the number of patent lawsuits). Guess by which yardstick lawyers measure their "performance", unlike judges?

Recent Techrights' Posts

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
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
 
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
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
Links 26/10/2025: Microsoft Spies on Gamers, Open Transport Community Conference
Links for the day
Links 26/10/2025: LLM Slop / Plagiarism Programs Continue to Disappoint, CISA Layoffs Threaten Systems
Links for the day
Gemini Links 26/10/2025: Gemsync and Joining the Small Web
Links for the day
India.com a Click-baiting, SEO-Spamming, Slopfarming Heap
They do this almost every day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, October 25, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, October 25, 2025
Without XBox Consoles, XBox is No More, It's Just a Brand (More Rumours of Microsoft Ending XBox, Then Laying Off Lots of Staff)
All signs indicate that Microsoft wants to "exit" the XBox business (not brand), but it does not want to publicly admit this as it would alarm staff and shareholders
Gemini Links 25/10/2025: Portugal, Midnightpub, and "Tech Right Admins"
Links for the day
Almost 2026 Already (When We Turn Twenty)
In just over a year the site will turn 20
When "Sponsored Feature" in The Register MS Means Ponzi Scheme Promotion From the Communist Party of China (CPC)
the promotion of a financial scam
Week of EPO Leaks: Workers of the EPO Are Getting a Pay Cut While Prices Rise Fast
More to come in the next few days
Microsoft is Finally Giving Up on XBox, The Chief Says the Grapes Are Sour Anyway
Microsoft loses hundreds of dollars on each XBox that it sells
Slopwatch: LinuxSecurity, UbuntuPIT, and Various Slopfarms Propped up by Google News
Why can't Google News do better than this?
Links 25/10/2025: Two New Smokescreens for Scam Altman and ‘TikTok USA’ Remains in Limbo
Links for the day
Bad faith: can't change Debian Social Contract (DSC) without unanimous consent of every joint author
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Confirmed: Very Close Friend of Bill Gates and Microsoft's Biggest Patent Troll Nathan Myhrvold Flew the Lolita Express (a Gateway to Pedophilia), According to Bill Gates-Sponsored Seattle Times
There is no speculation or any "conspiracy theories" here;' those are verified facts
Gemini Links 25/10/2025: "The Highest Leader of The Global Civil Society Community", SSL Certificates Causing Bitrot
Links for the day
Links 25/10/2025: Target Layoffs and "Shutdown Sparks 85% Increase in US Government Cyberattacks"
Links for the day
"Big Data" Was a Big Lie
Remember "Big Data"? Remember "Data Scientists"...?
statCounter Has Been Broken for a Long Time
Considering the huge proportion of Web requests that come from LLM bots (more so this past year or two), statCounter may struggle to justify the operating costs
Techrights Anniversary Party on November 7th
Let us know if you need any accommodation-related arrangements
Trends That Must Alarm Microsoft and Mozilla
Expect Firefox to no longer be supported by various sites in the US
Why Microsoft Became the Layoffs Leader
The corporate media is projecting or signalling its own dishonesty when it tells us that Microsoft is a very "valuable" company while the data shows Microsoft is also a "market leader" in layoffs
Speaking for Ourselves and Letting the Facts Speak for Themselves
we've already published over 50,000 pages
For Second Time in a Day The Register MS Takes Money From Private Companies to Sell a Ponzi Scheme
Do not have empathy for those who have zero empathy towards you
IBM is Misleading IBM Shareholders
IBM is still all about vapourware and buzzwords
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, October 24, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, October 24, 2025