Annals of civil service protection: the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has ruled in favor of the Patent and Trademark Office, which dismissed Asokkumar Pal after it “reviewed 16 randomly selected cases from Pal’s file to determine whether he was properly reviewing examiner decisions. They found he was not making the correct decisions – that he erred more than 35% of the time. (A 25% error rate would have been acceptable).” Pal’s appeal contended that others in the office had even higher error rates, that he had received many “outstanding” performance reviews, and that managers should have been required to review all of his cases rather than just a random sampling, but to no avail. (Patently-O, Dec. 16)*.
*Yes, we’re linking Patently-O even though they’re (momentarily) still ahead of us in the ABA blog contest voting. We’ll even stipulate that they’re a pretty good blog. That doesn’t excuse you from going and voting for Overlawyered now.
5 Comments
I wish I could have a 25% error rate at my job. Of course that would mean that somebody would probably get killed.
[…] Annals of civil service protection: the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has ruled in favor of the Patent and Trademark Office, which dismissed Asokkumar Pal after it “reviewed 16 randomly selected cases from Pal’s file to determine whether he was properly reviewing examiner decisions. They found he was not making the correct decisions – that he erred more than 35% of the time. (A 25% error rate would have been acceptable).”[From Federal Circuit: Patent Office can fire examiner with 35% error rate] […]
If the NRC or the FDA or the FAA were allowed a 25% error rate in their decision-making, the US would be quite an “interesting” place to live in. But the agency that certifies the “newness” of technical innovation allows it. I wonder if I culd patent the concept of m=F/a? Or maybe m=E/c*c? Or maybe even pi=A/r*r?
[…] More on the Patent and Trademark Office “acceptable error” employment case [Venture Chronicles, Jeff Nolan; earlier] […]
25% is not necessarily unacceptable,although it seems rather high. If your a doctor,a tenth of a percent is probobally too big. If your a licenced blaster (you work with explosives) a single mistake,period,probably not only ends your carrer but your life. With the FDA a single mistake can kill people. With a patent,it just means someone was given a patent,that wont hold up on challenge. In other words,if 25% of your patents that you approve are not valid, that means that 75% are. How many do you reject? Is your job to find every single invalid patent,or rather to eliminate the worst of them and only leave the ones that seem reasonable. After all,consider the ones that are NOT valid. How long does it take to determine that. Perhaps the patent application and approval process should be considered only the first step. The next step is the courts for those that someone thinks wont hold up. Just look at how much effort it takes,not just from the court but from research on both sides for those trying to prove it one way or another.
As for patenting those mathematical expressions,such things are explicitly NOT patentable. Those of course are rather simple uses of algebra,but imagine if your company had paid a physicist to discover the principles behind the a new coating proces,which you of course use to fine tune the manufacturing process. You might want to keep that a secret,along with the process itself.
In some cases,like if you make a new kind of engine,its just metal. Anyone can make a copy and it will work as well as the original. If its not patented you have no protection. On the other hand,some things are a process and not an item. They can also be patented,but sometimes companies choose to keep the process secret instead. The worry in these cases is that small changes can get around a patent,but if you have no clue how they for instance put a coating on something,then you might not be able to replicate it,even if you know exactly WHAT it is.