Patent Law

Praise the Dudas

By Gary Odom and Jordan Kuhn

Jeff Wold of IAM Magazine praises Jon Dudas for bringing home the bacon: "What the Patent Prospector and other Dudas critics fail to acknowledge is that fee diversion has ended on his watch." Wrong attribution.

Jon Dudas didn't end patent agency fee diversion. Patent rabble rousers did. Just like Jon Dudas had nothing to do in lining the pockets of key Congress members to get sordid patent legislation rolling. Patent rabble rousers did. Any competent USPTO director would have had the windfall of ending fee diversion at the time it ended, as it was contemporaneous with the rabble rousers striking up their band.

How much did fee diversion really matter? The PTO is still chockablock with examiners rendered incompetent by the word from on high to "reject, reject, reject" for the sake of political prestige that the PTO is tough enough. Let's not forget that examiner attrition is atrocious. All on Dudas' watch.

Wold: "[Dudas] has also persuaded a President not noted for any interest in IP to give him his full backing." So what if he did. Dudas being a political hack meant that he railroaded illegal rule changes past the supposed oversight mongrels at OMB. Full backing from the worst U.S. president in history for a patent thug dedicated to turning the examiner corps into slacker central; now there's a cherished prize for a cherished savant.

This country's patent regime would have been miles ahead of where it is today if a competent manager with deep patent experience had been at the helm of the USPTO during Dudas' watch, both in ending fee diversion, and fending off the insensibilities of the rabble rousers.

Full post as published by The Patent Prospector on March 22, 2008 (boomark / email).