Re: A thought about patents

[Toerless Eckert <Toerless.Eckert at Informatik.Uni-Erlangen.de>]

> not the one patent examiner that seems to have missed the
> existence of engineering libraries in his or her undergraduate
> education.

That's a bold presumption, and even though i don't know any of those guys whom
you put the blame upon, i'd rather think that you're trying to come up with
a much too simple explanation of the problem. First of all, there's an
inquality of weapons. The patent lawyers working on persuading the patent
office of the worthyness of the application get paid huge amounts by the
hour, the patent office examiners have to get through a specific amount of
applications per unit of time for a fixed income. "Resistance is futile,
your objections will just be out-processed by us" is what the lawyer will
just say.

Please don't forget that the requirement is just "non-obviousness" for the
typical person working in the field. Not for the experts after appliying
the insights that they've learned from the patent application itself. 

And if i read that "peer review" of yours, then this reminds me very much
of the stuff that happens in the scientific community. Read: Your paper get's
accepted in peer review for a conference, if your professor is good buddy
with all the peer reviewers, or your name is already well known. Else not.
Just look at how many european paper submissions get accepted by america
n conferences, then you know what i am talking about. I think there's less
justice in "peer review" than even in the broken patent process we
have today.

Just split the money someone pays for a patent application equally 
between the patent lawer and the patent office and make both of them get less
the longer it takes. Then give both type of people equal success money for the
amount of patent applications they refused (for the patent office) or
managed to get through (lawyers). That should already give a much more
equal and incentive battlefield.

Cheers
	Toerless