“The innovation that is fostered by a strong patent system is a key driver of economic growth and job creation.” That is how the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) began the Federal Register Notice announcing the patent quality initiative back in early February 2015. While it may seem like the drive for patent quality is a brand new initiative at the USPTO, the truth is that Director Michelle Lee (pictured, left) has been talking about patent quality ever since she assumed the role of Deputy Director and de facto head of the Patent Office nearly 18 months ago.
On Wednesday and Thursday, March 25 and 26, the USPTO took the first public steps on the road to enhancing patent quality by hosting a Patent Quality Summit at the Office’s main campus in Alexandria, Virginia.
Leading up to the event, I spoke with Valencia Martin-Wallace, who was recently named to the newly created position of Deputy Commissioner for Patent Quality. I asked her about what the Office hoped to accomplish with the Summit.
“We want to go through the process and have a better understanding that will help us in our daily work of prosecuting applications,” Martin-Wallace explained. “Brainstorming proposals will be easier if we know what stakeholders are concerned with.” She would also go on to tell me that it is important that “everyone gets a say-so with respect to what the initiatives are.”
On the morning of the Summit, Director Lee echoed these words. “If I’ve learned anything from my time in the labs and at Google, it’s that no idea is a bad idea,” Lee told the audience. “Let’s get all of your ideas on the table; whether you are here in person or online, we want to hear your ideas.”
The morning session of the Patent Quality Summit included the perspectives of many recognizable names within the industry. “Patent quality is not invention quality… they relate to each other, they impact each other… but patent quality is its own unique thing,” explained Manny Schecter, who is Chief Patent Counsel for IBM. Schecter would go on to say, “patent quality is a shared responsibility, not just on the USPTO,” which was a viewpoint shared by all the speakers.
Robert Budens, the President of the USPTO union – POPA – focused on the issues with laser-like accuracy. He told the audience the old, only partially apocryphal, saying about patent quality is this: “Good quality is when the USPTO issues my patent applications and rejects the patent applications of my competitors.” He used this as a way to describe the difficulty the Office faces.
Budens also addressed the 800-pound gorilla in the room: previous PTO attempts to improve quality unfortunately largely manifested themselves in management incentivizing examiners to reject, reject and then reject more. Budens referred to the “culture of fear in the agency that still lingers in the psyche of those within the examining core who lived through those early 21st century years.” Budens openly acknowledged that “discussions of new quality initiatives drudge up old memories from the depth of examining history.” This is no doubt true both within the examiner ranks and among patent attorneys and agents who couldn’t get patents issued in certain areas during the “second pair of eyes” era.
Retired Federal Circuit Chief Judge Paul Michel also had interesting thoughts on patent quality, saying that he isn’t thrilled with the term “patent quality” in the first place. “It does not really get us anywhere,” Michel said. “At the end of the day it is a binary question: the patent is valid or it is not valid… we should really be thinking about claim quality, one claim at a time.”
For a complete rundown of day 1 at the Patent Quality Summit please see A sincere desire to improve the quality of patents. You can also visit IPWatchdog.com to follow all of the latest news, events and interviews relating to the patent quality initiative.
Tags: Chief Judge Michel, Manny Schecter, Michelle Lee, patent, Patent Office, patents, Robert Budens, USPTO, Valencia Martin-Wallace
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