Pushing Patents
Richard Babyak
Posted on: 06/01/2005
In 2001, an Australian named John Keogh made news after being issued a patent for a “circular transportation facilitation device,” better known to most of us as the wheel. Presumably, he could have then launched patent infringement suits against makers of cars, bicycles, skateboards, and other things that roll. Fortunately, his objective was more meritorious, to illustrate the flaw in his country’s new patenting system that allows patents to be granted too easily.
Concerns over patent pushing extend well beyond Australia, however. An April article in New Scientist magazine in the U.K. suggests that the global trend of patent offices transferring paper records to digital storage is being poorly implemented, leading to large and numerous gaps in the archives, while paper documents are being destroyed. Incomplete electronic databases make it difficult for patent examiners to perform the essential task of researching “prior art” to determine the novelty of a patent application. And such deficiencies could lead to thousands of patents being wrongly granted.
Perceived problems with the patenting process here in the U.S. has already ignited a fiery debate, readily discerned in all the commentary inspired by the recent battle over the peanut butter and jelly sandwich. J.M. Smucker Co. had sought to patent its crimping process for making a crustless, pocket-sized peanut butter and jelly pastry, an effort that was rejected by a U.S. Court of Appeals in April.
Critics of the U.S. patent office say it has become nothing more than a rubber stamp since a 1980 Supreme Court decision that broadened the scope of what is patentable. The decision included a quote suggesting that “anything under the sun that is made by man” qualifies for patent protection. The incentive for the patent office to be more accommodating can be found in the fees that the institution earns granting and maintaining patents. Indiscriminate granting of patents has turned the office into a government profit center.
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