2004-07-06 US Aharonian: Worsening Software Patent Quality: No Progress in 15 Years
Gregory Aharonian presents an analysis of software patent examination during the last 15 years at the US Patent Office.
Gregory Aharonian anounced this information in his Newsletter as follows:
Original-Nachricht
- Betreff: PATNEWS: Worsening software patent quality - no progress in 15 years Datum: Tue, 6 Jul 2004 03:16:49 -0400
Von: patnews@ns1.patenting-art.com An: clients@patenting-art.com !20040705 Worsening software patent quality - no progress in 15 years
- .. At the request of a magazine, I updated my software patent statistics for up until the end of December 2003. Consistently for the last ten years, software patent pendency and quality have gotten worse. PTO management is fundamentally incompetent to oversee software patent prosecution. The consequences? By the end of 2004, there should be over 200,000 software patents, at least 120,000 of which are invalid but
litigatable. I am available to bust this crap
It should be noted that the remaining 80,000 presumably valid patents are also mostly trivial. The criteria of the patent system, even when correctly applied, do not eliminate trivial patents, especially not in the area of software.
The situation at the European Patent Office does not appear to be any better. See our EPO Dossier.
