Patents

I think I mentioned a while back that my attempt to get a patent finally resulted in a letter from the Patent Office that told me that it was essentially impossible to obtain a patent without hiring a patent attorney.  At NRA Next Generation Second Amendment Scholars conference I attended last weekend in Washington, one of the attorneys present was a patent attorney, and he agreed that it is a bit of a racket that benefited patent attorneys.  He knew of people who had managed to get patents issued without retaining a patent attorney, but they were very rare.

He also told me that yes, what I have found concerning the Patent Office directly ignoring federal statute, CFR (Code of Federal Regulations), and even Patent Office written policies is common: the Patent Offices does not follow the law unless compelled by suits filed by patent attorneys.  This was all very discouraging.  The only encouraging part of it was he told me that unless your invention is going to be worth at least three million dollars in royalties over the life of the patent, it simply makes no sense to file a patent, because you will spend millions of dollars enforcing your patent if it is ever infringed.

It appears that the original model that the Framers had in mind when they created a patent system that would be available to all inventors has been completely subverted so that like most everything else, it requires attorneys and gobs of money.  I guess that I should not be surprised.