Obama may be worse for patent policy than MacCain

Unfortunately, Senator Obama is addressing the problem of patent reform, but in a negative way. Senator Obama, along with Senators Hatch and Leahy, were the primary sponsors of the Senate version of the Patent Reform Act that just went down to defeat in the Senate. So, if Obama is elected President, he will definitely sign this awful piece of legislation into law. Practitioners whom I know have contacted Senator McCain, and they tell me that he is willing to listen to reason. Exactly what that means, I do not know.

Why the horse-shaped house is a problem patent

In a recent post, I mentioned a patent on a horse-shaped house (U.S. patent 5,564,239). Here is a very thorough analysis from a reader: The patent for a horse shaped sculpture may also be a good example of a weak patent examination process in action. The first cited patent - from 1882 - really sets forth the entire concept of an animal shaped building. Including stating "The building may be of the form of any other animal than an elephant, as that of a fish, fowl, & etc." That description pretty clearly includes a horse, and anyone looking at the patent - or the actual buildings that resulted, would surely realize that the building could be shaped like a horse, or a cow, or any other animal. Isn't it obvious to surround a building (of any sort) with a garden and/or a moat, and/or a fence? Lets see - gardens have surrounded buildings for centuries, and we've all seen castles from 500 years ago which are surrounded by water (and even have gardens in some cases - and even bridges over the moats). Is it novel to make the outline of the garden, or the moat, octagonal? Wouldn't that be an obvious extension, of say, a pentagonal or hexagonal shape? In fact if I wanted to spend an hour or so I bet I can find an octagonal moat surrounding a building. And thus with the prior art you have the '239 patent. But it is an amusing patent. I remember visiting Lucy the Elephant - built from Lafferty's 1882 design in Margate NJ. It was a decrepit relic when I was young, but has since been restored. See the story at: http://www.lucytheelephant.org/ The web site includes historical descriptions of other similar structures, how they were used for amusement purposes, etc. By the way -- Lucy the Elephant is surrounded by a rectangular fence, with an opening. Is it really an invention to make the fence octagonal instead of rectangular, rhetorically speaking?

How USPTO will be destroyed by the policies of the next president

Let's face it folks, Jon Dudas has been and is the worse PTO Director in the last twenty years. PTO operations and personal have suffered severe damage under his mismanagement, due to his complete lack of management experience and IP operations experience prior to coming to the PTO. NO MORE FREAKING SELL-THEIR-BODIES LEGISLATIVE AIDES IN THE PTO. The PTO cannot suffer eight more years of such mismanagement. The PTO will become nothing more than a registration system for large corporations building up portfolios. True innovators won't have the financial resources to deal with increasing levels of nonsense coming out of the PTO. Which is sadly ironic since both presidential candidates are touting innovation to save a slowly collapsing economy. But sadly, neither presidential candidate has said anything promising for true reform at the PTO. McCain's choice of Palin means that he will be more than happy allowing Palin to appoint more unqualified Peterlint-like legislative aides to head the PTO, and his suggestions for reform all avoid the most important problem - reform of PTO management. Obama's camp is spewing the same patent reform nonsense (public peer review, litigation reform, blah blah blah). If Obama is elected, he will allow Biden to appoint some Democratic lackey to head the PTO who will work with Leahy to sell the PTO to the Coalition for Patent Reform. And yes, this fall, I will be trying to raise funds to prepare for filing lawsuits over next year's appointments of PTO (Deputy) Director. You can be pretty sure that the AIPLA/ABA/IPO won't find some balls next year to defend against the destruction of the PTO.