Interesting article over at Wired about the patent backlog:
“The life of an American patent examiner is a harried one. More than a million applications are currently pending, and over a thousand more are added to the pile each day. The result is that it now takes an average of two to three years for an inventor to secure a patent. Inundated examiners can spend only about 17 hours judging the merits of each application, scarcely enough time to comprehend every facet of a new solid-state diode, synthetic resin, or surgical prosthesis. Yet unsympathetic critics vilify examiners for awarding patents too easily and thus doing the bidding of “patent trolls”—cunning operators who rack up patents solely in order to sue future infringers.”
