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→Current Issues Facing the Patent System
=Current Issues Facing the Patent System=
The number of patent applications sent to the USPTO has continued to increase over the years. Although innovation has not slowed, critics of the patent system are abundant and demand stricter reform. The USPTO
*Many patents are approved because [[United States Patent and Trademark Office]] examiners don’t have time or resources to search all the relevant references
**The current patent backlog, as of January 2016, is 561,585. [http://www.uspto.gov/dashboards/patents/main.dashxml (USPTO)]
**Total Pendency, time between patent filing and patent action, is 26.1 months, as of January 2016. [http://www.uspto.gov/corda/dashboards/patents/main.dashxml?CTNAVID=1004 (USPTO)]
***Total Pendency goal time is 20 months by FY2019. [http://www.uspto.gov/corda/dashboards/patents/main.dashxml?CTNAVID=1004 (USPTO)]
* “The past three decades of wanton patent-granting have created a disastrous environment for innovation. Today it’s practically impossible to build anything without violating a patent of some kind—and risking a multimillion-dollar lawsuit for your troubles.” [http://www.wired.com/2012/11/ff-steven-levy-the-patent-problem/ (Wired)]
*Technology industry has too many overly broad patents, leading to incredibly silly patent litigation cases
**Amazon “owns” the process that allows people to buy things with a single click.
**Apple now claims the exclusive right to sell rounded-edged, rectangular-shaped communication devices on which icons are arranged in a grid with a row of persistent icons at the bottom
**A small company in Tyler, Texas, once demanded more than $600 million from Google because of the design of the borders around its display ads.
*‘’’Patent Trolls’’’ are nonpracticing entities that don’t make products but exist solely on the revenue of its patents
**Costs a few thousand dollars to secure a patent, which can bring in millions through litigation
**It is usually more expensive to win a case against a troll than to just settle
*Last year, for the first time, spending by Apple and Google on patent lawsuits and unusually big-dollar patent purchases exceeded spending on research and development of new products, according to public filings. [http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/08/technology/patent-wars-among-tech-giants-can-stifle-competition.html?_r=0 (NYT-PW)]
*Me-too drugs: a drug that is approved after a pioneering drug and is the 'same'; it is not clinically superior to the original drug [http://www.who.int/intellectualproperty/topics/ip/Me-tooDrugs_Hollis1.pdf (WHO)]
==Patent Pools==
