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(Preliminary Injunction issued 10/31/2007) (Permanent Injunction issued 4/1/2008) Director Dudas' reply to Congressman Berman Does the USPTO understand its own new Rules? (Updated) Are you concerned about the
directions the USPTO
and Congress are being driven with regard
to Rule Changes and Patent Reform? Become Involved -
Write your Senators, Representatives, and the President! On August 21, 2007, the USPTO published new rules relating to claims and continuations in patent applications. The new rules are slated to become effective on November 1, 2007. We at NIPRA believe the new rules will do more to harm the U.S. patent system than they will to help it. Specifically, the rules seem to only address conduct problems of a small minority of patent applicants, while appearing to be ill-conceived for situations that will affect the great majority of patent applicants. At the same time, the rules fail to address the larger and systematic problems that have developed at the United States Patent and Trademark Office since 1993. It is in part curious to us that the USPTO management, by these rules, is attempting to turn over the "search" to the applicants, as if they believe that private researchers can inherently do a better job with the search than professional Examiners. We would like think the opposite, that Examiners should (because of their better tools, better training, better technological specialization, and higher level of required scientific/technical education) be able to do a better job than private researchers. Of course, the quality of a search is inextricably linked to the time that is allotted to it. But the USPTO management seems to be oblivious to this fact, not realizing that if Examiners were permitted to put as much time as we into a search, their results should be better than ours, for all the reasons we have mentioned. And if the USPTO management were better in touch with the examining corps and capable of understanding the issues they face, we believe the USPTO would have no trouble filling its Examiner hiring quota. And perhaps even a few ex-Examiner NIPRA members might return to the Office. As many people know, some of the most technically inclined individuals in modern history have been patent Examiners and clerks (Thomas Jefferson and Albert Einstein come to mind, to name just two). The job of patent research/examination is fascinating, challenging, and rewarding. It should draw the brightest individuals, and would, we think, but for the politics that have gripped the USPTO in the last 15 years. As Emeritus Law Professor Irving Kayton once said to a room full of young college students thirsty for knowledge and embarking on an exciting career in the field of Patent Law, "The search is the most important part of the whole process." He went on to tell us this was because everything else that would happen during the life of the patent depended on the search. Some of us have never forgotten this. Others have never known it. --- Do you have comments you'd
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