Allowance of Meritorious Patents

The biggest issue facing the new Acting Under Secretary for IP and Director of the Patent Office is to make sure that meritorious patent applications are granted. Public backlash against grant and enforcement of patents on “dumb” inventions has led the Patent Office to reject almost all patent claims in a first office action, requiring the inventor/company to respond, at considerable legal expense, only to receive a final rejection. Further prosecution or appeal (backlog and statistically unpromising) requires payment of additional Patent Office fees and legal fees and results in delays of years. The result of current Patent Office practice is that the U.S. patent system is becoming less effective in its Constitutional mission of promoting the progress of the “useful arts.” In an ironic twist, other countries, including Japan, China, Korea, and Germany, which have modeled their own patent systems after the historically successful U.S. system, are asking whether their countries’ inventors, not to mention U.S. inventors, will receive fair patent protection in the U.S. The solution is for the new Director to encourage examiners to grant meritorious patents quickly and at a reasonable cost to the inventor/company.