6 comments

[ 6.5 ms ] story [ 181 ms ] thread
Yes, a systemic breakdown has occurred. The very language used in patents is latin-like. Back in the days of Rome, the written language was deliberately built to enable the business of scribes, and was full of tenses, declensions etc. Write a letter = hire a scribe. Read a letter = the same. Unles you were educated. Hard to start a recolution, spread the word etc. This did not fade away until the 19th century in many languages. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin_grammar As some old Latin student at Eton wrote:- Latin's a dead language, lying in the dust, first it killed the Romans, now it's killing us.

In a similar way patent speak has become a language for an elite. This has made it very hard to hire capable examiners at the wages they offer. An examiner needs to be capable in both patent-speak and whatever technology is in the patent application. Most people capable in tech disciplines can get far better work elsewhere. So they need to reform the patent-speak into the common language of whatever country - making sure that correct terms are used. This would expand the examiner pool enormously.

It's absolutely surreal.
It costs $100,000 to defend, so you buy a licence for $10,000 It is easy to file, these trolls self file for peanuts and accumulate licencees...