Regarding "U.S. patent chief: applications up, quality down, the article shines some light--not on the patent applicants, but on the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

I can assure you that the quality of patents I have submitted (36 so far) has not declined. I am equally sure that this is the case for the vast majority of other applicants. What I am equally sure of is that the quality of examiners has substantially declined. We are currently in the n-th round of rejections with "Requests for Continued Examination" for my last two patents, and that is not due to the quality of my patents. It is due to directives of the U.S. PTO and due to the inability of the examiners to understand English and the subject matter itself.

That lack of qualification paired with the general lack of understanding of technology (or the subject matter, on a broader view) leads to rejections that are plain invalid. I have expert opinions backing up our view, but the examiners keep rejecting claims.

Since the U.S. patent system has proven to be useless, it is useless to try to protect an idea by patenting it--especially since of course the application has to be published.

It has basically become necessary to return to a system in which inventions are kept secret, and that a lab book with unfalsifiable entries and dates be kept so that if someone else tries to patent that exact same idea or invention or method, one can always claim the existence of prior art, and thereby invalidate someone else's patent application.

That makes the entire U.S. PTO unnecessary, and consequently, it should be abolished. Any patent dispute could be argued in front of a civil court, without the [patent office] being involved, and we'd all save tax dollars and [patent] examination as well as lawyer's fees.

In other words, it is not "applications up, quality down" as stated by [patent office director Jon] Dudas. To the contrary, it is "applications up, sophistication of applications up, diversity of applications up, quality of examiners down."

Axel Kloth
CTO, Vice President of Engineering
Parimics Inc.