[AR] Re: Printed engine patent

  • From: Henry Spencer <hspencer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: Arocket List <arocket@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Sat, 7 Mar 2020 22:03:59 -0500 (EST)

On Sat, 7 Mar 2020, Stephen Daniel wrote:

Patents are supposed to be a non obvious extension of the prior art.  I'm
not sure how patent examiners decide to award patents, but non-obvious is
never a requirement, and extension often isn't.

The US Patent Office (and its counterparts elsewhere) seems to have given up on (a) paying enough to get and retain staff who are actually familiar with the details of the fields they're covering, in (b) sufficient numbers that they can actually spend serious time studying each patent. The volume of applications is far greater than it was fifty or a hundred years ago, and the resources allocated haven't grown to match.

Henry

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