New Data Shows Extent of Patent System Slowdown
(Alan Koto/Flickr)
Note: This is a follow-up to our report on the U.S. government’s secret program for slowing down patent applications, called SAWS.
New information obtained via record requests from the U.S. Patent and Trademarks Office shows the extent of the slowdown on patent applications discreetly placed into its controversial SAWS program.
Based on the data, gained via record requests to the patent office, the average time it takes to process a patent placed in SAWS –– short for “Sensitive Application Warning System” –– is double the time it takes for a regularly processed patent. Applications placed in the SAWS program also endured double the number of rejections as regularly processed patents.
The data — which is based on applications filed in 2006 — showed that only about .04 percent of all patent applications are thrown into the purgatory that is the SAWS program. So in 2006, for instance, only 132 of the 320,000 applications were given what is essentially the intellectual property kiss of death.
Though the number of applications affected by SAWS each year is low, Thomas Franklin, a partner at Kilpatrick Townsend whose clients have been affected by the program, says it still threatens to derail the U.S.’s system for protecting intellectual property.
"If it happens to you, it doesn’t matter if it’s rare," he told Yahoo Tech. "You still are afflicted with this disease. And they will not tell you if you’ve gotten the disease. So you will be put into this black hole, and you’re wondering why you’re never coming out of it. And they’re not going to be forthright in telling you."
The SAWS program, as I reported in December of last year, is a covert system for delaying patents on what could be controversial or inconvenient inventions. Though the patent office has had the system in place for decades, it was only publicly acknowledged after Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton LLP — a law firm that represents major tech companies like Apple, Google, and Twitter — requested a formal report via a Freedom of Information Act request. Otherwise, patent applicants would have no way of knowing why their applications had been slowed down so long.
The official criteria to be placed in the SAWS program is incredibly vague, ranging from applications of “broad or pioneering scope” to those “dealing with inventions, which, if issued, would potentially generate unwanted media coverage (i.e., news, blogs, forums).” You can read the full 50 pages of its parameters here.
Kate Gaudry, an associate at Kilpatrick Townsend, pointed out that the low number of applications placed into SAWS each year is still concerning, considering the program’s criteria would qualify about 90 percent of her firm’s patents for the program.
"We don’t even have a sense of what’s going into this program," she told Yahoo Tech. "We can’t see whether it is just applications that are just silly, or if these are some of the most important inventions in the United States. We don’t know."
This is a situation all too familiar to Gilbert Hyatt, a well-known inventor who filed a lawsuit against the patent office in a Nevada federal court last year, accusing it of delaying action on a pair of computer-related patent applications he filed about 40 years ago.
"The patent office has a tremendous latitude in making these illegal practices, whether it’s by SAWS or other processes," Hyatt told Yahoo Tech. "In my cases, it just sat on my patent applications for decades, without doing anything, ignoring my petitions for office actions. I’ve had some applications delayed so long that some of the technology has become obsolete and worthless."
With the revelation of the SAWS program, however, Hyatt says he believes he’s a victim of the system, and he is now working with his legal team to incorporate the issue into his litigation.
"I’ve had wind of the SAWS program before, but no way to get information on it," he said. "This opens it up, and there’ll be a lot more FOIA requests happening."
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