| Conflict of interest is one reason, but there are others. The process that PTO use, is one based on 19th century condition. 19th century administrative standards is very simple and got bright lines; they don’t require a great deal of expensive investigation. The assumption of the 19th century patent system is that everything that should be patented already is patented already. Like other 19th century administrative structures, the patent office assumes that all it can be expected to do is to look in its own files and to make rough binary determination - 0 or 1, novel or obvious or not - on the basis of the consultation of its own administrative record. This mean that PTO's job is to only answer questions based on its own records. A invention is novel if the clerk can't find a similar invention in the office. A invention is non-obvious, if the clerk do not consider the invention to be a natural extension of any existing files. PTO stills live in that system while everything else has evolved forward during the 200 years that has passed, including what type inventions that are patentable. This mean that a large number of invention never got filed when they got discovered. If a patent application then get sent in several decades later, the result is simple. The patent office grants the patent because the invention is not in the archive. This is crazy. We should not use 19th century administrative process in the 21st. We should not assume that government knows everything, or that their records can stretch over inventions when such inventions was unpatentable. Doing 20 years governmental intervention into the market should be a serious undertaking where the government are responsible if such intervention cause serious harm or is done faulty. |