Praise for Patent Examiners

[ndrosen]

Patent Examiners sometimes get praise and thanks from inventors and attorneys when we are able to allow their applications without too many additional limitations, and sometimes are excoriated for making allegedly unreasonable rejections, or for allowing cases that either are, or can be made to sound, improper or ridiculous. For the most part, though, we aren’t much in the public eye, so I was a little startled the other day to find someone lauding a pair of “USPTO Patent Examiners.”

I was reading a legal weblog, the Volokh Conspiracy, when I came across a brief post by Professor Volokh himself, in which someone who was litigating about something else, and making much use of four letter words, lauded the two patent examiners. I don’t think I could have been one of them.

And now to begin my day’s (tele)work.