Pardon the pun.
Patent reform, a perpetual hot topic of conversation in the halls of the United States Congress, is seemingly on the minds of five Democratic senators who are trying a different tactic: Administrative, rather than legislative, reform.
In a recent letter to the Secretary of Commerce, the coalition urged five goals formulated under the mindset that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure:
(1) Implement steps to incentivize examination quality over quantity.
(2) Direct Patent Examiners to ensure that the patent file history is complete and ambiguities resolved prior to patent issuance.
(3) Assess whether the PTO’s additional steps to address functional claiming concerns “are sufficient to address concerns that functional claiming provides a loophole from definite, precise claims.”
(4) Expand crowdsourcing and public data analysis as a mechanism to identify ambiguous patents and categories of patents, or those that generate litigation risk — then target those areas for more thorough examination.
(5) Ensure public access to information about patents and their histories.