“Drain the swamp!”
That’s the theme of the day.
An undrained swamp example at the Patent Office: The PTO 3.2 billion dollar budget (2015) is indeed a “swamp” with government waste. As an example, in this user-funded Agency just one program – the “RCE” – accounts for $ 240 million in government fees, an “innovation tax” on the creativity community.
To be sure, it is not entirely the fault of the PTO that we have the RCE problem. It is the applicant community that to a great extent fails to take a holistic approach to patent draftsmanship that results in patent applications that cannot be efficiently examined without at least one RCE.
This paper analyzes the RCE problem. The stuy is an outgrowth of a treatise now in production, FIRST TO FILE PATENT DRAFTING: A PRACTITIONER’S GUIDE (Thomson Reuters forthcoming 2017), which will also be available on Westlaw.
The RCE problem is analyzed in the attached paper, The RCE Innovation Tax on the Inventive Community: Fostering or Discouraging Innovation?
Regards,
Hal