And about frigging time too.
Frank Schilling on his blog reveals that three patent lawyers are suing the US Department of Commerce over their appointment of Margaret Peterlin who is, they say, ‘unqualified’ to be the head of the USPTO.
For geeks like Geeklawyer this sorta matters. US IP policy is a controversial area and its competence is questionable. If it were confined to the US it wouldn’t matter a whole lot (actually it would), but with IP assuming a greater role in US global commercial policy and with neo-con willingness to impose democracy on the disobedient lesser nations, it matters a lot. A whole bunch of matters a lot.
The USPTO has significant problems. It has a staff turnover that would alarm MacDonalds, the place is a sweatshop and the staff demoralised. They can’t seem to recruit people, recruit the right people, hang on to them when they do nor provide a workable IT infrastructure. The pressure is on the hamsters to deal with vast swathes of patents by spinning the cage wheel at ever higher speeds.
As a consequence the quality of US patents is poorer than a $1000 Chinese Rolls-Royce knock-off. To be blunt: it’s a clusterfuck.
According to the piece:
Congress amended the Patent Act in 1999 to require that the Director and Deputy Director of the USPTO each have “professional experience and background in patent or trademark law”.
The suit was filed by Greg Aharonian, David Lentini, Steve Morsa and David Pressman. (Geeklawyer wonders if this is the same David Pressman who wrote a book called ‘How to File your Own Patent‘? He has used this to draft a number of his US patent applications for clients. Profitable, but not what the author intended 
)
The broad allegation is that the huge problems at the USPTO stem from poor senior & mid level management and her appointment will, at the very least, not improve this. Geeklawyer has no idea if this is true or not but it would seem conceivable.
Peterlins background seems to be as a policy wonk to Congress on issues including IP but she doesn’t appear to be an IP lawyer as such. So it would seem the merits will hinge on whether policy experience qualifies as suitable professional experience under the Act. Geeklawyer guesses that it will. But anything that improves quality will be more than welcome. It’ll be quite welcome.
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