Examiner's hard drive crash costs him his job

Also in the September issue of the PTO Examiners' Union's newsletter: Examiner fired after computer crashes When managers in Technology Center 2700 offered next to no catastrophic time after the hard drive crashed and burned for a probationary examiner who was producing at 100 percent, the examiner's production unsurprisingly suffered and the USPTO fired him because he had "not progressed at the expected rate". Maybe the examiner could have progressed at the expected rate with a crashed hard drive if the examiner was working from a beach in Hawaii. Any patent reform that does not start with an overhaul of PTO management is corrupt patent reform.

COPYRIGHT TERM EXTENSION VIOLATE "PROGRESS" IN THE CONSTITUTION, OR DOESN'T IT?

Law professor Maria Pollack, whom I have criticized in the past for not understanding, science, engineering or patent law, HAS written an interesting article on how aspects of copyright law violate the "progress" clause of the Constitution. Her paper is titled "What is Congress supposed to promote? Defining 'progress' in Article I, Section 8, Clause 8, of the United States Constitution", and appeared recently in the Nebraska Law Review. Her conclusion:

This Article uses linguistic evidence to disprove a long standing assumption about the Progress Clause, which gives Congress "the power ... To Promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts by securing for limited times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries". The word "progress" is not a reference to the Enlightenment Idea of Progress and, thus, an anachronistic bias incapable of cabining Congress. The word "progress" means "spread". Congress does not have the power to create any intellectual property regime it thinks will increase the Gross National Product, campaign donations from holders of large copyright portfolios, or world harmonization. Any right to exclude others from use of writings and discoveries must promote the spread of knowledge and technology. This clarification of the constitutional language warrants court overthrow of both the circumvention limitations in the Digital Millenium Copyright Act and the twenty year subsidy provided copyright holders by the Copyright Term Extension Act.

Another lesson in writing claims

In patent claim language, comprises and includes mean the same. The use of comprises is acceptable between preamble and body of an independent claim. Further comprising is also OK in the independent claim.

In dependent claims, however, the language must use include and not comprising unless it uses further comprising.

In method claims (for ex. a. adding to database; b. associating data; c.parsing data groups), a, b, c do not imply order unless:

the claim language specifically mentions that "wherein step d is effected before step c"

or

the preamble of the claim leads into the body of the claim with comprising the steps, and not comprising steps.