The Nonlinear Library: LessWrong LW - patent process problems by bhauth
Jul 15, 2024
08:15
Link to original article
Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: patent process problems, published by bhauth on July 15, 2024 on LessWrong.
The current patent process has some problems. Here are some of them.
patenting is slow
The US Patent Office tracks pendency of patents. Currently, on average, there's 20 months from filing to the first response, and over 25 months before issuance.
That's a long time. Here's a paper on this issue. It notes:
The USPTO is aware that delays create significant costs to innovators seeking protection. The result? A limiting of the number of hours an examiner spends per patent in order to expedite the process. As such, the average patent gets about nineteen hours before an examiner in total, between researching prior art, drafting rejections and responses, and interfacing with prosecuting attorneys. Plainly, this allotment is insufficient.
A patent application backlog means it takes longer before work is published and other people can potentially build on it. It also means a longer period of companies having uncertainty about whether a new product would be patented.
examiners are inconsistent
Statistical analysis indicates that whether or not your patent is approved depends greatly on which examiner you get. This article notes:
Approximately 35% of patent Examiners allow 60% of all U.S. patents; and approximately 20% of Examiners allow only 5% of all U.S. patents.
Perhaps applicants and examiners should both be allowed to get a second opinion from another examiner on certain claims. But of course, this would require more examiner time in total. This situation might also indicate some problems with the incentive structure examiners have.
patents take effort
A lot of smart people who work on developing new technology spend an enormous amount of effort dealing with the patent system that could be spent on research instead. Even if the monetary costs are small in comparison to the total economy, they're applied in perhaps the worst possible places.
There are many arcane rules about the format of documents for the patent office. Even professional patent lawyers get things wrong about the formatting and wording, and that's their main job. LLMs do quite poorly with that, too. Even I've made mistakes on a patent application.
The US patent office does do most things electronically now. Its website is at least technically functional. Considering that it's a US government agency, I suppose it deserves some praise for that. However, I'd argue that if correctly submitting documents is a major problem and even professionals sometimes get it wrong, that's a sign that the format is badly designed and/or the software used is inadequate.
For example, their website could theoretically remind people when required forms in a submission are missing.
Currently, the US patent office is trying to migrate from pdf to docx files. Maybe that's an improvement over using Adobe Acrobat to fill pdf forms, but personally, I think it should accept:
markdown files
git pull requests for amendments
png diagrams that use solid colors instead of monochrome shading
I used to say Powerpoint was bad and maybe companies should ban it, and business-type people explained why that was really dumb, and then Amazon did that and it ultimately worked well for them. The problem Amazon had to solve was that most managers just wouldn't read and understand documents and long emails, so when banning Powerpoint, they had to make everyone silently read memos at the start of meetings, and they lost a lot of managers who couldn't understand things they read.
At least the US patent office people have the ability to read long documents, I guess.
international patents are hard
If you get a patent in the US or EU, that's not valid in other countries. Rather, the PCT gives you up to 30 months from your initial application to apply for patents in other countries, ...
Welcome to The Nonlinear Library, where we use Text-to-Speech software to convert the best writing from the Rationalist and EA communities into audio. This is: patent process problems, published by bhauth on July 15, 2024 on LessWrong.
The current patent process has some problems. Here are some of them.
patenting is slow
The US Patent Office tracks pendency of patents. Currently, on average, there's 20 months from filing to the first response, and over 25 months before issuance.
That's a long time. Here's a paper on this issue. It notes:
The USPTO is aware that delays create significant costs to innovators seeking protection. The result? A limiting of the number of hours an examiner spends per patent in order to expedite the process. As such, the average patent gets about nineteen hours before an examiner in total, between researching prior art, drafting rejections and responses, and interfacing with prosecuting attorneys. Plainly, this allotment is insufficient.
A patent application backlog means it takes longer before work is published and other people can potentially build on it. It also means a longer period of companies having uncertainty about whether a new product would be patented.
examiners are inconsistent
Statistical analysis indicates that whether or not your patent is approved depends greatly on which examiner you get. This article notes:
Approximately 35% of patent Examiners allow 60% of all U.S. patents; and approximately 20% of Examiners allow only 5% of all U.S. patents.
Perhaps applicants and examiners should both be allowed to get a second opinion from another examiner on certain claims. But of course, this would require more examiner time in total. This situation might also indicate some problems with the incentive structure examiners have.
patents take effort
A lot of smart people who work on developing new technology spend an enormous amount of effort dealing with the patent system that could be spent on research instead. Even if the monetary costs are small in comparison to the total economy, they're applied in perhaps the worst possible places.
There are many arcane rules about the format of documents for the patent office. Even professional patent lawyers get things wrong about the formatting and wording, and that's their main job. LLMs do quite poorly with that, too. Even I've made mistakes on a patent application.
The US patent office does do most things electronically now. Its website is at least technically functional. Considering that it's a US government agency, I suppose it deserves some praise for that. However, I'd argue that if correctly submitting documents is a major problem and even professionals sometimes get it wrong, that's a sign that the format is badly designed and/or the software used is inadequate.
For example, their website could theoretically remind people when required forms in a submission are missing.
Currently, the US patent office is trying to migrate from pdf to docx files. Maybe that's an improvement over using Adobe Acrobat to fill pdf forms, but personally, I think it should accept:
markdown files
git pull requests for amendments
png diagrams that use solid colors instead of monochrome shading
I used to say Powerpoint was bad and maybe companies should ban it, and business-type people explained why that was really dumb, and then Amazon did that and it ultimately worked well for them. The problem Amazon had to solve was that most managers just wouldn't read and understand documents and long emails, so when banning Powerpoint, they had to make everyone silently read memos at the start of meetings, and they lost a lot of managers who couldn't understand things they read.
At least the US patent office people have the ability to read long documents, I guess.
international patents are hard
If you get a patent in the US or EU, that's not valid in other countries. Rather, the PCT gives you up to 30 months from your initial application to apply for patents in other countries, ...