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Kappos: "But the truth is the USPTO is struggling."

By Lawrence B. Ebert, Esq.

An article in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel ends with a quote of David Kappos, USPTO Director: "But the truth is the USPTO is struggling."

The article is mainly about a company co-owned by Dick Capstram: As a self-educated inventor whose father ran a garage in Chicago, Capstran won his first patent in 1969 for an automotive exhaust system.

One might recall that muffler patents were ridiculed in a recent post by Gray/Wegner as noted in the IPBiz post
Cars and patents and Jacob Krippelz. Specifically, Gray/Wegner wrote:

Does patenting a better ?muffler? help  the auto industry?
In the automotive industry ? where  cars are sold based upon every factor 
other than patents

But do Gray and Wegner think about folks like Mirk Buzdum and Dick "Cappy" Capstran and Jacob Krippelz? Probably not.
Buzdum was quoted:

"It's obvious that these technologies are valid, because people are stealing them and they're in production."

Jon Dudas (now at Foley & Lardner, along with Wegner) was also quoted:

"The backlog will grow in the medium- and long-term. Without changing the funding system, the growing backlog and inability to support and hire examiners becomes a vicious cycle."

Coincidentally, Buzdum and Capstran use a Foley & Lardner attorney: They also have hired one of Milwaukee's best-known patent attorneys, Barry Grossman of Foley & Lardner.

Much of the article is about the USPTO program of "abandon one; accelerate another":

Now, under new management, the agency has proposed allowing "small entity" companies with two or more pending applications to accelerate the examination of one of them - but only if the applicant will abandon all rights to another.

**See also
http://fredericksburg.com/News/FLS/2009/112009/11292009/509146

Full post as published by IPBiz on November 29, 2009 (boomark / email).