# How massively underfunded is the US Patent & Trademark Office? Let me count the ways. **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [December 8, 2005, 10:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-massively-underfunded-is-the-us-patent-trademark-office-let-me-count-the-ways/334650 "2005-12-08T10:47:31Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2005, 10:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-massively-underfunded-is-the-us-patent-trademark-office-let-me-count-the-ways/334650/1 "2005-12-08T10:47:31Z")
Let’s count down the top ten US patent holders, the ten people who hold more patents than anyone else in this country. Just a sec … I know that list is here _somewhere_ … Heeere, listy listy listy! Oh, that’s right. [_We have no freaking idea._](http://www.usatoday.com/tech/columnist/kevinmaney/2005-12-06-top-patent-hoders_x.htm) The USPTO has computers powered by slugs on horse tranquilizers. They issue patents left, right, and center, but they can’t manage to keep track of them well enough to answer a simple goddamned question. Why is that? Well, like many things egregiously broken about our country, it’s all down to those fucktarts in Congress. They keep popping up everywhere, fucking people every time. They don’t fund the USPTO enough for it to do its job, so it has become so disorganized its computer systems cannot handle a simple database query. Maybe this is related to Don’t Ask-Don’t Tell, but they’re not saying. Why is this troubling? It’s symptomatic of a much larger problem. One of the biggest sanity checks applied to new patent applications is whether someone has already patented it. Since the number of patents issued every year is enormous, no human could possibly look through all of them to find the needle in the haystack that pops the current application. Thus they need _kickass_ database technology. Their lack of _basic_ database technology makes me question their ability to do anything worthwhile whatsoever. > [@The linked article](#): > > As it turns out, the USPTO has but one guy who does statistical studies of the agency’s 7 million-patent database. He last sorted for individual inventors in 1997, and has since been too busy with other projects to update that list. > > [snip] > > “The last five years include some 1 million granted U.S. patents,” Thomson’s Ryan Sheppard e-mailed me, explaining why Thomson couldn’t pull it off, either. “Ten years of data would be roughly double that. So we are talking astonishingly large numbers of documents.” We have relational databases. We’ve had them for decades now. We have SQL, and have for a good long time. It isn’t supposed to matter that the USPTO generates 1 million patents in five years, because databases are meant to grow to gigantic sizes without becoming unmanagable. We have invested a lot of time to make that possible. Apparently, none of that technology reached the USPTO. ---
**Author:** ![SentientMeat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/43a26b/32.png) [@SentientMeat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SentientMeat)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2005, 11:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-massively-underfunded-is-the-us-patent-trademark-office-let-me-count-the-ways/334650/2 "2005-12-08T11:07:32Z")
Ironic, really: The country which grants patents for anything under the sun (including computer programmes and databases), in order to supposedly encourage progress, finds itself light years behind the rest of the world who _don’t_ grant such monopolies willy-nilly. Whodathunkit? ---
**Author:** ![Cheesesteak](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cheesesteak/32/3694_2.png) [@Cheesesteak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cheesesteak)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2005, 11:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-massively-underfunded-is-the-us-patent-trademark-office-let-me-count-the-ways/334650/3 "2005-12-08T11:36:47Z")
Not to rain on your parade, but if the system can do a proper patent search, I don’t really give a shit if it can’t answer some trivia question from a hard hitting USA Today reporter. ---
**Author:** ![Padeye](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/a9a28c/32.png) [@Padeye](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Padeye)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2005, 11:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-massively-underfunded-is-the-us-patent-trademark-office-let-me-count-the-ways/334650/4 "2005-12-08T11:41:39Z")
> [@Derleth](#): > > We have relational databases. We’ve had them for decades now. We have SQL, and have for a good long time. It isn’t supposed to matter that the USPTO generates 1 million patents in five years, because databases are meant to grow to gigantic sizes without becoming unmanagable. We have invested a lot of time to make that possible. I don’t know the specifics of the USPTO’s databases but to say that any database and server is scalable is a false one. Very often “scaling” is nothing more than adding disk space without adding processor capacity. This, combined with a database design that may not have been all that good to begin with and neglect of basic tasks such as index and statistics regeneration can result in the problem you’ve seen. FWIW I work for a company that makes massively parallel database systems. The architecture allows the system to expand by adding CPUs to keep processing power in a constasnt proportion to storage. Scaling can be virtually unlimited with no drop in performance but even this can be poorly setup so even a small database is slow. ---
**Author:** ![Squink](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b5e925/32.png) [@Squink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Squink)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2005, 2:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-massively-underfunded-is-the-us-patent-trademark-office-let-me-count-the-ways/334650/5 "2005-12-08T14:23:45Z")
> [@Cheesesteak](#): > > Not to rain on your parade, but if the system can do a proper patent search… [You can’t do a proper search with so many missing records:](http://www.uspto.gov/patft/index.html) > [@](#): > > (full-text since 1976, full-page images since 1790) ---
**Author:** ![plnnr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/7ea924/32.png) [@plnnr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/plnnr)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2005, 2:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-massively-underfunded-is-the-us-patent-trademark-office-let-me-count-the-ways/334650/6 "2005-12-08T14:48:30Z")
I worked for the Patent and Trademark Office while in college, and the office downstairs had the **only** working version of a particular Xerox copier left in the world. It wasn’t on display - they actually used the damn thing! It was impossible to get parts for, was ungainly and huge - just a complete mess. Still, the micro-fiche that they used to make certified copies of patents could only be copied on this one copier. ---
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2005, 3:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-massively-underfunded-is-the-us-patent-trademark-office-let-me-count-the-ways/334650/7 "2005-12-08T15:07:23Z")
Let’s see…the way I figure it (carry the 3), if Congress gave the Patent Office the amount of money we are spending in Iraq in (times 9, minus the square) **12 minutes** , they could completely revamp their database, hire a dozen techs to do the work, and be back in the 21st century by 2007. Naah. Too easy an answer. ---
**Author:** ![ENugent](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/4af34b/32.png) [@ENugent](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ENugent)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2005, 6:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-massively-underfunded-is-the-us-patent-trademark-office-let-me-count-the-ways/334650/8 "2005-12-08T18:39:44Z")
> [@silenus](#): > > Let’s see…the way I figure it (carry the 3), if Congress gave the Patent Office the amount of money we are spending in Iraq in (times 9, minus the square) **12 minutes** , they could completely revamp their database, hire a dozen techs to do the work, and be back in the 21st century by 2007. > > Naah. Too easy an answer. You know what? Congress doesn’t give the PTO a red cent. Congress takes money paid by inventors for patent examination, and uses it to build bridges to nowhere. [It’s a crime.](http://patentlaw.typepad.com/patent/2005/11/house_judiciary.html) ---
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [December 8, 2005, 11:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-massively-underfunded-is-the-us-patent-trademark-office-let-me-count-the-ways/334650/9 "2005-12-08T23:33:07Z")
> [@ENugent](#): > > You know what? Congress doesn’t give the PTO a red cent. Congress takes money paid by inventors for patent examination, and uses it to build bridges to nowhere. [It’s a crime.](http://patentlaw.typepad.com/patent/2005/11/house_judiciary.html) Well, fuck that. The situation is even worse than I thought. The fucktarts strike again. ---
**Author:** ![Martin\_Hyde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/47e85d/32.png) [@Martin\_Hyde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martin_Hyde)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2005, 12:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-massively-underfunded-is-the-us-patent-trademark-office-let-me-count-the-ways/334650/10 "2005-12-09T00:25:38Z")
> [@SentientMeat](#): > > Ironic, really: The country which grants patents for anything under the sun (including computer programmes and databases), in order to supposedly encourage progress, finds itself light years behind the rest of the world who _don’t_ grant such monopolies willy-nilly. Whodathunkit? Actually patents are pretty widespread across the world. The UK has a patent office, Canada has a patent office, there’s a European patent organisation. And last I checked the world’s eminent military and economic power, the first nation to land men on the moon and one of the few nations with manned space flight, isn’t “light years behind the rest of the world.” What exactly were you talking about, anyways? Because I have a sick suspicion you don’t even know. By the way, to answer the OPs question click [here](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_top_United_States_patent_recipients) . ---
**Author:** ![mobo85](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/b19c9b/32.png) [@mobo85](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mobo85)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2005, 12:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-massively-underfunded-is-the-us-patent-trademark-office-let-me-count-the-ways/334650/11 "2005-12-09T00:37:55Z")
But that list is by company, not by individual. And it is annual, not all-time. ---
**Author:** ![SentientMeat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/43a26b/32.png) [@SentientMeat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SentientMeat)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2005, 11:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-massively-underfunded-is-the-us-patent-trademark-office-let-me-count-the-ways/334650/12 "2005-12-09T11:06:10Z")
> [@Martin Hyde](#): > > Actually patents are pretty widespread across the world. The UK has a patent office, Canada has a patent office, there’s a European patent organisation. > > And last I checked the world’s eminent military and economic power, the first nation to land men on the moon and one of the few nations with manned space flight, isn’t “light years behind the rest of the world.” > > What exactly were you talking about, anyways? Because I have a sick suspicion you don’t even know. Thank you for informing me that the UK has a patent office, and about the EPO in Munich. You have made my commute to work far easier. The OP bemoans that the **database** technology in the USPO is far behind _eg._ Epoque. The irony I noted is that the US routinely grants patents for databases and computer programmes which the rest of the world consider trivial and exclude from patentablility. I hope I have allayed your paranoid mental illness. ---
**Author:** ![Capt.Ridley\_s\_Shooting\_Party](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/cc9497/32.png) [@Capt.Ridley\_s\_Shooting\_Party](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Capt.Ridley_s_Shooting_Party)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2005, 1:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-massively-underfunded-is-the-us-patent-trademark-office-let-me-count-the-ways/334650/13 "2005-12-09T13:08:22Z")
> [@](#): > > The irony I noted is that the US routinely grants patents for databases and computer programmes which the rest of the world consider trivial and exclude from patentablility. What’s trivial about a computer programme? ---
**Author:** ![smiling\_bandit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9a140/32.png) [@smiling\_bandit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smiling_bandit)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2005, 2:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-massively-underfunded-is-the-us-patent-trademark-office-let-me-count-the-ways/334650/14 "2005-12-09T14:35:55Z")
First off, it’s Computer _Program_. Programme is rather different. You don’t _Programme_ a computer. Sorry… I’m picking at nits again. > [@](#): > > by **SentientMeat** > The OP bemoans that the database technology in the USPO is far behind eg. Epoque. The irony I noted is that the US routinely grants patents for databases and computer programmes which the rest of the world consider trivial and exclude from patentablility. I hope I have allayed your paranoid mental illness. I’m afraid that your statement wasn’t very clear, Sentient. It sounded pretty blanket up there. ---
**Author:** ![Capt.Ridley\_s\_Shooting\_Party](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/cc9497/32.png) [@Capt.Ridley\_s\_Shooting\_Party](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Capt.Ridley_s_Shooting_Party)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2005, 5:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-massively-underfunded-is-the-us-patent-trademark-office-let-me-count-the-ways/334650/15 "2005-12-09T17:37:34Z")
No, computer programme is a valid alternative, usually British or Canadian in origin. ---
**Author:** ![Quartz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quartz/32/267_2.png) [@Quartz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Quartz)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2005, 6:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-massively-underfunded-is-the-us-patent-trademark-office-let-me-count-the-ways/334650/16 "2005-12-09T18:37:38Z")
Perhaps a silly question, but is the PTO actually underfunded or is it mismanaged or bloated with bureaucrats? Or maybe all three? According to the [US PTO themselves](http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/com/sol/og/2003/week52/patrept.htm), it’s the Senate that’s the villain > [@USPTO](#): > > Turning briefly to FY 2004, as of the writing of this Annual Report, once again, the USPTO is operating under a continuing > resolution that limits it to the already much reduced funding levels > appropriated in FY 2003. On September 4, 2003, the Senate > Appropriations Committee approved S. 1585, Departments of Commerce, > Justice and State (CJS) Appropriations Bill for FY 2004. **The bill would > fund USPTO at approximately $1.217 billion.** The House version, H.R. > 2799, passed by the full House on July 23, 2003, would fund USPTO at > approximately $1.239 billion. **Thus, compared to the President’s budget > request for the USPTO of $1.404 billion**, these proposed appropriations > would once again significantly **reduce USPTO funding levels, anywhere > from $187,000,000 (13.3%) based on the Senate’s mark, to $165,000,000** > (11.8%) based on the House mark. These funding levels, if adopted, > will severely challenge the USPTO to meet its basic operating > requirements, let alone move ahead with implementing the > Strategic Plan.19 I can’t find a USPTO document for 2005 or 2006 but [here](http://www.ipfrontline.com/depts/article.asp?id=2050&deptid=8) it states that the 2006 budget is US$1.7Bn. Of note: > [@Cited article](#): > > In FY 2006, the USPTO anticipates hiring 900 patent examiners and 75 trademark examining attorneys. I don’t see any mention of improved computer systems there. ---
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2005, 7:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-massively-underfunded-is-the-us-patent-trademark-office-let-me-count-the-ways/334650/17 "2005-12-09T19:50:01Z")
> [@Dominic Mulligan](#): > > What’s trivial about a computer programme? Things that are trivial to someone in the field might never occur to anyone who is not in the field. This is probably true of all fields, but since I happen to know so much about programming it’s those examples that rankle the worst. This is why a patent office, _any_ patent office, needs to have people versed in every field for which it will patent inventions, to weed out bogus patent applications. [The Anatomy of a Trivial Software Patent](http://linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2000-05-26-004-04-OP-LF), where the kind of patent that makes developers livid is taken apart claim by claim and proven to be utterly, abysmally trivial. ---
**Author:** ![Skywatcher](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/skywatcher/32/254_2.png) [@Skywatcher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skywatcher)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2005, 8:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-massively-underfunded-is-the-us-patent-trademark-office-let-me-count-the-ways/334650/18 "2005-12-09T20:05:48Z")
> [@Cheesesteak](#): > > Not to rain on your parade, but if the system can do a proper patent search, I don’t really give a shit if it can’t answer some trivia question from a hard hitting USA Today reporter. As **Derleth** said, it’s symptomatic of a much larger problem. -Lute Skywatcher, friendly neighborhood USPTO employee. ---
**Author:** ![Skywatcher](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/skywatcher/32/254_2.png) [@Skywatcher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skywatcher)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2005, 8:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-massively-underfunded-is-the-us-patent-trademark-office-let-me-count-the-ways/334650/19 "2005-12-09T20:13:23Z")
> [@Quartz](#): > > Perhaps a silly question, but is the PTO actually underfunded or is it mismanaged or bloated with bureaucrats? Or maybe all three? No, we’re correctly managed, not bureaucratic, and fully funded through our fees. In fact, we’re overfunded through our fees but Congress won’t let us have the excess to make improvements. Their reasoning is that we’re not doing enough with what we have but we can’t do more because what we have is bogged down, as **Derleth** said. > [@](#): > > In FY 2006, the USPTO anticipates hiring 900 patent examiners and 75 trademark examining attorneys. This is the first time in years that we’re expanding our examining ranks, a job which has one of the highest turnover rates for white-collar workers in the entire country. ---
**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\ **Post date:** [December 9, 2005, 8:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-massively-underfunded-is-the-us-patent-trademark-office-let-me-count-the-ways/334650/20 "2005-12-09T20:31:12Z")
> [@Lute Skywatcher](#): > > a job which has one of the highest turnover rates for white-collar workers in the entire country. Shit, I wonder why. Could it be the fact patents are written in the vaguest, broadest, least-English-like legalese imaginable? This is another thing that absolutely gets me: The yahoos who file patents want their patent to encompass the world, so they write it in the most convoluted way possible, aiming to almost completely stifle any attempt to comprehend it. This has the knock-on effect, not entirely unintentional I’m sure, of making the task of searching for patents extremely difficult, which makes the task of finding relevant prior art just about impossible. In my perfect world, all patents not written in plain English would be rejected out of hand. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-massively-underfunded-is-the-us-patent-trademark-office-let-me-count-the-ways/334650.md?page=2)