BERKELEY, CALIF. --- Executives of a group of top-tier technology companies plan to roll up their sleeves to help solve problems at the U.S. Patent Office.
FTC Commissioner Mozelle Thompson closed a high-level conference on reforming the patent process Friday with the announcement of a new technology industry working group that will cooperate on making the patent system more responsive to technical innovation. Cisco, Intel, eBay, Symantec, Chiron, Microsoft, and Genentech said they will work with regulators and legislators on patent reform.
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The U.S. patent process is deeply broken, according to the IT companies. As the number of patent applications has exploded, the quality has gone down. The result is boom times for lawyers and a lifetime of litigation for corporate counsel.
Jay Monahan, associate general counsel for eBay, said patent problems for his company began about three-and-a-half years ago, when it began getting mostly frivolous letters asserting claims.
"It's driven eBay's costs up. I spend more of my time on patent issues than any other single issue," he said.
Companies that use complex technology - semiconductors, Internet software, biotechnology and nanotechnology among them - have a strong focus on patents.
"Our industry is characterized by a rapid product development lifecycle and incremental innovation," said Michael Schallop, Symantec senior corporate counsel. "Competitors develop similar features or even improve on them, so you have an incentive to patent as many of your key product features as you can."
The lack of time examiners spend on individual patents seems shocking. The 3,000 examiners handle 350,000 applications a year. They only spend an average of 17 hours on any particular application - spread out over as much as three years. Many panelists agreed that the quality of U.S. patents issued has gone down.
A major proposal issued in this context is the introduction of a post-grant Opposition procedure which is already common troughout Europe. So, although the anti-patent movement surely will attempt to benefit from these debates, that what those activists want surely is not what is demanded by the major U.S. IT industry. (Link thanks to Patently Obvious)
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Dipl.-Phys. Axel H Horns is Patentanwalt (German Patent Attorney),
European Patent Attorney as well as European Trade Mark Attorney. In particular, he is Member of:
Susan Kuchinskas writes in an 
