UK PTO workshop divides lawyers and engineers over patents

By Matt Whipp

Posted on 8 Apr 2005 at 12:28

Even among the engineers present at the workshop, there were disputes over the patentability of some applications under examination, simply because of their various specialisations.

Asked how many patent examiners were experts in technology at the UK patent office, Philpott replied: 'Dozens'. But still the delegate wasn't satisfied and suggested the examiners post their CVs online so that the public could know how qualified they were to judge patent applications.

Perhaps the most hope we have that Europe's patent system won't follow in the broad wake of the US is the system itself. In the US, a patent examiner is a stepping stone job on the way to being an attorney. Philpott said that in the UK, it's a career taken much more seriously.

He said that a patent examiner studies an application for a day, sometimes longer. Conversely, as an indication of the attention given by its US counterparts, patent expert Greg Aharonian a few months ago offered some statistics from the US Patent Office for last year. Despite having a database of some 4mn samples through which to search for prior art, the average patent cited just two. 'In 10 years the [US] PTO has been unable to do anything to improve patent quality, especially in terms of handling non-patent prior art. Everything they have tried has been a failure.'