The current USPTO.gov headline

JimIvey

The tone might not sit well with many practitioners, but it helps to take a step back and look at the bigger picture.  If the Patent Office is boasting the power to clean out the registry of practitioners, it suggests that the remaining (un-ousted) practitioners are not that bad.

It helps to keep in mind the facts (if it's the case I think it is).  There was one practitioner who was the only practitioner working for a number of invention promotion companies.  From what I understand, the guy was a signature mill -- signing document after document prepared by ... who knows... but not registered practitioners.  

I've heard a number of people claim this or that invention submission company needs 5 figures "to keep the application going."  I've also had a prospective client tell me an invention submission company only needed $800 to "take [him] to patent pending" (and that was before there was such a thing as a provisional application).  Anyone who works in this field knows that there's something very wrong with those numbers, so something very odd was going on.

I understand it's slightly worrisome to see a public declaration of "cleaning out" of the registry of practitioners, but I think the result is that the registry that remains will have a better reputation as a result.

Just a thought....

Isaac

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Jonathan

Those are good perspectives, I appreciate your viewpoints on this matter.

Bill Ri...

I don't see any difference between what the PTO is doing a what happens every month in every state bar in the country.  Attorneys are always being sanctioned for wide variety of misconduct, some of which reflects quite badly on the profession.  (Stealing from clients, failure to follow up on cases, etc.)  IMHO, the better the bad eggs are weeded out, the better the rest of the profession can look.

Jonathan

Bar associations don't appear to advertise when they do disciplinary hearings.

Yes, all that info is most likely publicly available but not as a headline on their main website.

USPTO.gov is a very prominent , national website.

Admittedly, I am splitting some fine hairs but I just don't see the point in advertising this particular disciplinary proceeding when others have not been.

That being said, I will totally be fine if all previous, and / or future, proceedings are given the same attention by the PTO via their main website.

JimIvey

Good point.  Kicking someone out should not be front-page news -- in poor taste, perhaps.

However, from what I understand, the PTO feels its been getting bad press too often and for too long.  Hence, all the dysfunction in the examiner corps -- no real authority in the examiners to make decisions, penalizing the examiners for not closing cases (without authority to allow anything), pushing more of the examining burden on to applicants, etc.  So, it doesn't surprise me to see the PTO flaunt any affirmitive steps to improve the patent system as a whole.

Regards.

P.S.  Just added the "not" in the first page -- significant oversight on my part.

still_s...

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JimIvey

First, my understanding is that an implicit assertion in every signature is that the signed paper has at least been read.  It may have been that the volume of signatures made it clear he hadn't been reading the documents.

Second, and more likely and more problematic, my understanding was that the papers were pretty clearly not prepared competently.  I'll give an example of something I've seen that was probably similar (but by a different practitioner).  I've seen a provisional application that was a direct printout of the client's e-mail explaining -- in very general terms -- what the client would like to have patented, including admissions that they hadn't figured out how to actually make it yet.  The "drawing" was a direct copy of a fax received from the same client.  The e-mail (i.e., the actual body of the provisional "application" -- have to use that term lightly here) spelled out that the attorney was to be paid $500 for that.

Jeez!  Probably 30 minutes of support staff time for $400!  The value of such a filing?  Zero -- actually a liability in my opinion as the client is likely to rely on "protection" afforded by such a filing.

So, you're right.  Signing something someone else wrote is no big deal.  But, if it's inadequate, responsibility rests with the signing party.  And, in my understanding, there were severe problems with the papers signed by the particular practitioner I had in mind.  My point in bringing up the "signature mill" was to illustrate the lack of care exercised by the practitioner.

Regards.