Patent Office Chief Resigns - Praised For Reform?
from the more-of-the-same dept
theodp writes "USPTO Director James Rogan is leaving the Bush administration in January to complete work on his autobiography, "Rough Edges," which will be published next summer, but can be preordered at Amazon.com today (be sure to turn on that patented 1-Click!). According to today's USPTO press release, Rogan changed the culture of the agency by making quality, not the time it takes to get a patent, the hallmark of its work - judge for yourself!" Amazingly, the article about him leaving talks about how much he's done to reform the patent system. Yet, every day we still seem to see ridiculous patents. If that's what we call reform these days, I think we need something different.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
Channels the book 1984
If you repeat a lie long enough to enough people, it becomes truth.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
No Subject Given
The USPTO is not a regulatory agency; it's not there to block patent applications. It's there to accept fee money for patents.
Patent applications aren't examined anymore, they're processed. Clerks have to process a certain caseload, and grant a vast majority of the requests. Only the USPTO database itself is searched for "prior art."
The only trend in the positive which I've seen recently is to move toward a more transparent public review before patents are actually granted. But this is far from the level of transparency required to allow the market to really vet and challenge the absurd patent applications for obvious and non-novel methods.
[ link to this | view in chronology ]