Working for the USPTO

[horsechute.]

or watch the playboy channel (if you can) on the same computer I was writing my office actions on. I would be afraid that a photo of the playmate of the month might accidentally get sent out along with my office action. Haven't heard of it happening yet, but I suppose that it will sooner or later. Might even get a bigger laugh from the Attorneys than the ones we are getting reading the latest rounds of Office Actions.

It is a wonder you are still single.

[MYK]

Would the real horsechute please stand up? 

I think we need to start enforcing the Lanham Act around here.

[ChrisWhewell]

yep, I think this thread should be laid to rest till 2011.  Getting a job in the USPTO is now purely hypothetical.

Put to better use, between now and 2011 you could use the thread for lawyer jokes.

Veteran and rookie cop looking on the scene of an accident.  Veteran asks rookie to provide his best guess as to what happened. 

Rookie says, "based on this ugly, greasy smear on the road, it could only have been one of two things.  Speeding driver hit a pig that somehow got loose from his pen, or hit a lawyer who was aimlessly wandering drunk down the middle of the road."

"Well", says the veteran, "which was it?".

Rookie says, "You can't tell based on the information we have."

Veteran disagrees and says, "It's your first time out so I'll cut you some slack, but to any trained observer it should be obvious it was a lawyer from the fact that there are no skid marks."



("No pigs or lawyers were harmed in the telling of this joke.  Tiger does not consume plastic wrap.")

Below is purportedly from the steno's record of an actual case somewhere in the US:

Lawyer: "Doctor, before you performed the autopsy, did you check for a pulse?"
Witness: "No."
Lawyer: "Did you check for blood pressure?"
Witness: "No."
Lawyer: "Did you check for breathing?"
Witness: "No."
Lawyer: "So, then it is possible that the patient was alive when you began the autopsy?"
Witness: "No."
Lawyer: "How can you be so sure, Doctor?"
Witness: "Because his brain was sitting on my desk in a jar."
Lawyer: "But could the patient have still been alive nevertheless?"
Witness: "Yes, it is possible that he could have been alive and practicing law somewhere."

[horsechute]

HorseSchute, although ethically challenged and apparently not to bright, is probably not a bad guy in person; he just does not like what I have to say about the PTO, since he obviously works there. After all, who else would take it so personally? But that is the whole point. He would not take it so personally if it were not true. So in a sense, HorseSchute actually does have one redeeming quality after all. He is patriotic.

Now get back to your counts, HorseSchute.

[Examinerguy]

It might be that AustrianOak guy who is the impersonator.

[horsechute]

If you don't think it is, as they said in the movie "Wall Street", all about bucks, and that as any moral philosopher (or Ronald Regan) will tell you, man's natural state is one of laziness, consider the following solutions to reducing the backlog of unexamined patent applications at the PTO, and the problems associated with each of them:

Solution                                                                      Problem

1)   Outsource the search                                              POPA hates the idea

2)   Have SPE's examine a reasonable number of cases        The SPE union, SPECO hates the idea

3)   Shorten the length of the office action to 1 page          The attorneys would hate the idea

4)   Amend the count system even further                         The examiners hate the idea

5)   Hire more examiners                                                  Congress would ultimately hate the idea

Now where does this leave the inventors, the most important aspect of the whole system? Nowhere. They have $1 and a plaque of their patent on the wall. And the company shareholders who ultimately own the patent? Nowhere. Unless it is something major, like the patent on Prozac being invalidated, they only care if their stock goes up or down.

Then again, all is not lost. At least this does give material for ivory tower professors to write about, many of whom have never even seen a real patent. And, unlike the examiners who at least have a count system to worry about, these academics don't have to worry about a thing. After all, they have academic tenure.

[MYK]

It might be that AustrianOak guy who is the impersonator.

I'm pretty sure it's Jon Dudas.  It has to be either him or tripledirect.

[horsechute]

Funny, considering that:

MYK = Still_Studying

[MYK]

Funny, considering that:

MYK = Still_Studying

Well, actually, I'm goofing off right now.

ETA: Hey -- do me a favor and chime in on that UVA thread.  I think the kid took me seriously.  He could use a hug.

[horsechute]

"Hey -- do me a favor and chime in on that UVA thread"

Sorry, but I only have enough time to deal with such class acts as HorseSchute and Jimson Weed.

Seriously, Moi, how was your first year of law school? I understand the ACLU has not had a lot of luck recruiting on your campus  .

And how did you, a while back, offer to have me email you? Boxes all of the sudden appeared on my screen. Clever...

[thatguy]

Solution                                                                      Problem

1)   Outsource the search                                              POPA hates the idea

2)   Have SPE's examine a reasonable number of cases        The SPE union, SPECO hates the idea

3)   Shorten the length of the office action to 1 page          The attorneys would hate the idea

4)   Amend the count system even further                         The examiners hate the idea

5)   Hire more examiners                                                  Congress would ultimately hate the idea

A+ analysis. 

Does the TM side of the house operate the same way as the Patent side?  I've never heard much about the TM side other than TM funding being shifted to the patent folks.  Something about robbing Peter to pay Paul sticks in my mind.

[MYK]

"Hey -- do me a favor and chime in on that UVA thread"

Sorry, but I only have enough time to deal with such class acts as HorseSchute and Jimson Weed.

Seriously, Moi, how was your first year of law school? I understand the ACLU has not had a lot of luck recruiting on your campus  .

And how did you, a while back, offer to have me email you? Boxes all of the sudden appeared on my screen. Clever...

ACLU??  They're all over the place here, along with ACS.  I don't know where you think I go.  Are you confusing me with someone else?

You could at least explain your reasoning in the nutritional supplement/vitamin metabolite thread.  While I can see a use for the product, I don't see him/her getting past nonobviousness under any circumstances.  I "strongly suspect" you don't have any reasoning, and just want to disagree.

First year was fun.  Second year is even better.  I've already asked if I can hang out here for a fourth year so I can take all the classes I want to take.  Might have to do a BSEE and just "visit" this side of campus on a daily basis. 

I have no idea what you're referring to regarding email or boxes.  Wasn't me, so I suspect you are confusing me with some Lanham Act violator like "horseschute" or "horsechute.".  I've heard of a website javascript hack that does that, though;  4chan (I hang out on /wg/, not on /b/) keeps getting infected with it.  Try using the NoScript addon for Firefox;  I've never seen the boxes myself, since I never allow scripts unless I'm forced to by a site that I have to use (financial account access, mostly, or logging in to check email somewhere).  I'd also recommend Flashblock, because Flash tends to be a bandwidth and CPU hog.  A Knoppix LiveCD is also useful for preventing virus infections, but it's a bit of a lifestyle change.

[Examinerguy]

If you don't think it is, as they said in the movie "Wall Street", all about bucks, and that as any moral philosopher (or Ronald Regan) will tell you, man's natural state is one of laziness, consider the following solutions to reducing the backlog of unexamined patent applications at the PTO, and the problems associated with each of them:

Solution                                                                      Problem

1)   Outsource the search                                              POPA hates the idea

2)   Have SPE's examine a reasonable number of cases        The SPE union, SPECO hates the idea

3)   Shorten the length of the office action to 1 page          The attorneys would hate the idea

4)   Amend the count system even further                         The examiners hate the idea

5)   Hire more examiners                                                  Congress would ultimately hate the idea

Now where does this leave the inventors, the most important aspect of the whole system? Nowhere. They have $1 and a plaque of their patent on the wall. And the company shareholders who ultimately own the patent? Nowhere. Unless it is something major, like the patent on Prozac being invalidated, they only care if their stock goes up or down.

Then again, all is not lost. At least this does give material for ivory tower professors to write about, many of whom have never even seen a real patent. And, unlike the examiners who at least have a count system to worry about, these academics don't have to worry about a thing. After all, they have academic tenure.

Your ideas are great minus one small little thing...MONEY. Where do you think the office will get the money to perform 1, 4 or 5. Not to mention that outsourcing the search would have a huge initial financial impact. Wasn't it just a month or so ago that they announced a 200 million dollar shortfall for the office in FY2010?

[MYK]

1)   Outsource the search                                              POPA hates the idea
4)   Amend the count system even further                         The examiners hate the idea
5)   Hire more examiners                                                  Congress would ultimately hate the idea

Your ideas are great minus one small little thing...MONEY. Where do you think the office will get the money to perform 1, 4 or 5. Not to mention that outsourcing the search would have a huge initial financial impact. Wasn't it just a month or so ago that they announced a 200 million dollar shortfall for the office in FY2010?

I don't see that amending the count system would necessarily increase costs.  So much time is being wasted now by frivolous rejections that by amending the count system to pressure examiners to do proper searches and rejections, the examiners might well save time in the long run.

I mean, really, when examiners blows off responses by using crap art, they just wast the entire time spent on those responses.  They don't use the next two months to find good art to make proper rejections next time around;  they just use the time to blow off even more crap responses on yet more applications.

I had one where the examiner didn't even reject the invention -- he rejected the prior art section!  The invention involved a serial connection;  the prior art involved various sizes of parallel connections.  The whole point was to get rid of the dozens of different parallel designs.  So, the examiner went out, found some stuff that used parallel connections, and wrote, "hey, see, people have been using parallel connections in this field for years!"

So, how long did he waste on reading, searching, and doing the writeup?  Four hours, maybe?  It took me about half an hour to read everything and figure out he'd completely blown it, another half hour to explain it to my manager, and an hour to write a very polite response to the examiner in which I repeatedly had to delete phrases such as "boneheaded cretin", "descendant of slugs", and "I hope you don't breed" that mysteriously kept appearing.

And then on another one, the client screwed up and sent in prior art that matched their invention perfectly.  It would've been a trivial slam-dunk rejection, but the examiner never bothered to read the reference, and neither did the client.

Look, I can't speak for the rest of the world, but I personally don't mind a good, solid rejection.  Give me one and I'll go tell the client he's screwed.  Then you guys can get back to watching night elf strippers in the WoW taverns.

[DogDayPM 9er9er9er]

...and an hour to write a very polite response to the examiner in which I repeatedly had to delete phrases such as "boneheaded cretin", "descendant of slugs", and "I hope you don't breed" that mysteriously kept appearing.

Sorry, man, I didn't realize that was your computer.  But you shouldn't leave it unattended and unlocked.  I just can't resist pranking a neighbor's AutoCorrect file when someone leaves me an opening like that.

(Had a friend who was a horrible typist - 2 finger hunt/peck and only rarely looked at the document he was typing.  I changed "the" to "the rain in Spain stays mainly on the plain the", which he didn't catch for a week or so.  We also physically switched the D, S on hid keyboars ans it took him monthd to notice we's sone do.)