Homocon

What with all the recent discussion regarding President Bush's push for torte reform, perhaps a way of helping reform the legal system and curtail burgeoning retail costs would be holding runaway governmental offices financially responsible for the negligence that creates and furthers expensive and unnecessary lawsuits.

"One of the reasons that a patent system exists is to reward inventors for disclosing their invention to the public. This implies that an invention should be new, because otherwise the inventor would get a reward for telling us something we already know."

Technically, Smucker's didn't claim to have created the crustless Peanut-Butter and Jelly sandwich, but they held a patent for it nonetheless, awarded in 1999 to Len Kretchman and David Geske, who sold the patent to Smucker's for an undisclosed amount. But not by any stretch of the imagination could anyone reasonably conclude that, in 1999, a crustless PB&J sandwich was a new invention, machine, method or process -- so what the U.S. Patent Office did in 1999 was, essentially, to reward Len Kretchman and David Geske for telling us something that we already knew!

Smucker's claimed that their PB&J process described in their patent was novel because they slathered peanut-butter on both sides of the bread (in order to prevent a soggy, jellied side) and they "crimped" the bread at the edges to prevent jelly seepage, but these methods were ruled as falling under the "obvious" category, in that any logical human being in his or her own kitchen would have thought of the same damn thing, and in about 20 seconds flat. And you're not supposed to issue a patent for obvious methodology.

What makes this an even more alarming example of Patent Office bungling is "The Paris Convention" established in 1883 which gives patent holders a "priority right" to extend their patents worldwide, which would have meant that Smucker's could have conceivably filed to extend their patent internationally and hence have claimed the sole, GLOBAL right to market crustless Peanut-Butter and Jelly sandwiches, filing challenges worldwide and basically making any other crustless PB&J maker's lives a living hell.

*snort*

But hey -- the U.S. Patent Office appears to earn its employees a decent living. Just for point of reference, in 1983, the U.S. Patent Office granted 62,016 patents; in 1993, they granted 109,890 patents; and in 2003, they granted a whopping 187,053 patents.

kaching!

Looks like somebody's figured out just how to milk that cash cow, and we the people are paying the price, both literally and figuratively.

RELATED:
There's an excellent patent blog here, with today's post discussing, coincidentally, patent reform.

There's a blog for everything . . .