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Against Monopoly

defending the right to innovate

Monopoly corrupts. Absolute monopoly corrupts absolutely.





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Patents (the one horse shay) are coming apart

The GAO reports some impressive numbers on the USPTO link here and here and here. The latter plans to hire 1200 examiners a year for the next five years, but the backlog will increase to more than 1.3 million applications. If it could hire 2000 a year (presumably, it can't), the backlog would only increase by 260,000 to 953,643. So they are going to get the Patent Reform Act to slow the growth of the backlog.

Just thinking out loud, how can that be done? Any changes in patent law will almost certainly have to cover patents already granted. So depending on how they change the law, they may actually increase the backlog and/or the amount of litigation.

Talk about a broken system.


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