Patent System Reform

As a patent attorney, I agree that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has been awarding patents too frequently, and I applaud the efforts to tighten things up. This tightening should be based on a serious examination of what creativity really is and what its hallmarks are. “Note: This Headline Is Patented” (Feb. 7) strongly implies that identification of creative work is a matter of “common sense.” It is not.

For example, the peanut butter and jelly sandwich patent covers, at most, only PB&Js; where the edges of the crust are mashed or crimped together in some fashion. Assuming all of the relevant evidence has been collected, there is no prior documentation of a mashed-edge PB&J.; The article’s lead suggests that everyone’s intimate familiarity with the plain old PB&J; makes the mashed-edge PB&J; patent suspect. This is backward. With the mashed-edge PB&J; patent, we have apparently gotten something that we have been missing. This is what creativity is all about from an economic perspective.

Hopefully, the patent office will begin to investigate human creativity as a real economic policy question. That way, it could provide reasons for allowing and disallowing applications in a manner that actually promotes creativity in our tech-sector companies and makes the public more comfortable with the powerful patent monopolies that beckon hopeful applicants.

David B. Woycechowsky

Wonder Valley, Calif.

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The litigation regarding business methods patents is another example of what is wrong with tort law. For too long, the game has been heads, the plaintiff wins; tails, the defendant loses. After reading “E-Commerce Battles ‘Me’-Commerce” (Feb. 8), I began to wonder whether I might consider applying for a patent to be called: “A method for extracting protection money from honest folk using the court system.”

Perhaps I could then claim a portion of the loot that the professional litigators are extracting from fast-food companies, airlines, the tobacco industry, the silicone-implant people, the asbestos interests, countless physicians and surgeons and others who have been forced to pay up.

Sidney Hatchl

Santa Ana

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Whoever holds the patent for “putting two and two together” should invalidate those held by Lawrence Lockwood, with the exception of his “patent” avarice.

Shayne Hood

Newhall