The parent clearly said that approved parents were bullshit, and I agree. I have several patents, and have seen how nonsense the process is. When lawyers obfuscate the text enough to confuse the patent examiner, the patent gets approved. I can't tell if an individual patent examiner is competent or knowledgeable, but patent decisions have nothing to do with factuality or novelty.
I do remember your comments from past threads too. It really interesting to hear the perspective from the patent office's side, but the idea that the patent office had some secret and specialized method of evaluating novelty is ridiculous. Any expert can read a sample of granted patents and tell you that. I'd estimate maybe 5% of patents in my field have any novelty, and that's being generous.
I'm sure this has more to do with incentives and the overall system, and that individual patent examiners would prefer to do a good job. But you have to admit that the results are atrocious.
> The parent clearly said that approved parents were bullshit, and I agree.
Just because they said it was granted, doesn't mean that it was. A lot of people here don't seem able to distinguish between a granted patent and a rejected patent application. Here are two examples that I bothered to reply to in the past:
> the idea that the patent office had some secret and specialized method of evaluating novelty is ridiculous
I don't think they do and I never said they do. The USPTO follows some legal standard that I personally don't agree with. I agree with you that too few granted patents have genuine novelty.
> But you have to admit that the results are atrocious.
No, I don't. You've seen a small selection of what the USPTO outputs. Only the bad cases appear in the news. In contrast, I've seen a far larger and unbiased selection and know that the majority is fine. Most applications are rejected. I probably rejected over 75% myself.
I have seen the results from searches of patents in my field, and the patents that my colleagues get granted. It's hard to find even a single good patent in the bunch.
Is there a way to sample 5 random ML patents? I'd be surprised if half were any good.
I think the quality of examination and search is excellent given how little time examiners have. But mistakes still happen too frequently, and the mistakes can be highly costly. Better to stop problems upstream in my opinion by giving examiners more time.
Patent quality is related but different. I agree that patent quality is awful, but there's only so much an examiner can do to influence that. Attorneys have basically gamed the system to write vague legalese that's patentable but basically useless. And to paraphase a supervisor I knew at the USPTO, "Just because it's stupid doesn't mean that it's not patentable". I can't reject them if it meets the legal standards but is stupid.
I do remember your comments from past threads too. It really interesting to hear the perspective from the patent office's side, but the idea that the patent office had some secret and specialized method of evaluating novelty is ridiculous. Any expert can read a sample of granted patents and tell you that. I'd estimate maybe 5% of patents in my field have any novelty, and that's being generous.
I'm sure this has more to do with incentives and the overall system, and that individual patent examiners would prefer to do a good job. But you have to admit that the results are atrocious.