A patent: a time wasted or not

A comment from an inventor questioning whether or not to waste his time and money filing a patent (and disclosing his innovation), if he is going to get screwed by the PTO:

Personally I have been pausing in the wings before I submit several
patent applications, so that I am reasonably assured that it is
worth the time and effort to do so. It may very well be that I am
better off not filing anything at all, if the applications can be
construed as just revealing what I have invented, with very few
options if it costs too much to respond to the PTO, and thus very
little value conferred by doing so.

A great issue for the AIPLA, IPO, or ABA, if any of these groups actually
cared about everyone's interest in a healthy patent system.

If the Patent Reform efforts succeed, we are all just dog meat,
after all, and all of my efforts and my money spent trying to
acquire a US patent will be for naught. Somewhat frustrating, when
I sincerely believe that I have much to contribute in the alternative
energy field.

How PTO management incompetence is destroying small companies

Someone sent in the following ancedote, which is heard way too
often:

I was at an open house for a small IP law firm about a month ago and
was talking to the IP/research VP of a small biotech. They are a
start-up who have been waiting just over 2 years and still haven't
got a First Action on the Merits on their lead invention. They have
had to let almost everyone go and they are just holding on waiting
for that critical patent. It is so sad.

I am hearing this lament more and more, from biotech startups, software
startups, alternative energy startups. Because of PTO delays, they are
having to abandon patent applications, cripple their companies, and delay
hitting the markets with their products. Patent quality? It's suffering,
as everyone inside and outside the PTO is cutting back on searches (well,
that's more crap to bust in the future for me, though there is already
enough such crap).

If you have more such stories, please send them my way. Congress and the
Obama Administration need to hear this suffering, otherwise it is a waste
of billions of taxpayers' dollars to fund new energy/IT technologies, if
the startups, where much of the innovation will come from, can't protect
their breakthroughs in a timely matter. Otherwise, it is another signal
that the Obama Administration is pursuing an industrial policy that
favors large companies.

How John swapped steel plates

John was working for a utility company. One day they were burying a cable, and needed to temporarily cover an excavated pit. To cover they used what you might have seen and probably driven over - a large steel plate. John was a foreman at the site, and told his backhoe operator to start lowering the plate into place.

Except John was a diligent foreman. He liked to do things perfectly. He wanted to be sure that the steel plate would sit well over the outline of the excavation, not wobble, and not crumble asphalt and rock onto the half-finished cable interface. Just as the plate was being lowered, he decided to sneak one last peek under the plate. Except the backhoe operator was not so experienced at fine controlling the lowering function, and lowered the plate by too jerky of a motion, which squashed John the Foreman's skull.

As John recollected, after almost a year in a wheel chair, and partial memory loss, the split second he felt the weight of the plate was like the worst headache, except being inside his skull bones. John is 80% normal now. He cannot drive, concentrate, remember complicated information, and has a high-tech, combination stainless steel-titanium plate replacing most of his skull dome. The upshot of it, he has not needed any psychological counseling. He doesn't remember the details of his stupid decision to regret the whole episode.