Web Publishing: On-line Right now, However What About Tomorrow Or The place Have You Gone, 406,302?
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Within the January, 2006 concern of Mental Property Right now, attorneys Thomas J. Van Gilder and Carl A. Kukkonen cited to a doc on the webpage of america Patent and Trademark Workplace [USPTO] for the proposition that “patent filings have grown from 353,394 to 406,302, a rise of practically 15%, from FY 2002 to FY 2005.” In footnote 3 of their article, they rigorously offered the web page variety of the doc and the hyperlink to the doc: See USPTO 2005 Annual Report at 61, http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/com/annual/2005/2005annualreport.pdf.
The attention-grabbing, and troubling, facet about that is that one is not going to discover within the cited doc on the given hyperlink the quantity “406,302”.
The quantity 406,302 didn’t come up out of skinny air. Mental Property Right now had talked about the quantity in its December 2005 concern: The company acquired 406,302 patent purposes, and
323,501 purposes for trademark registration as reported in its fiscal 12 months 2005 Efficiency and Accountability Report launched in November. The journal eWeek had talked about the quantity on January 16, 2006: Final 12 months, the USPTO granted 165,485 patents, up from 99,000 in 1990. In accordance with the patent workplace, a report 406,302 new purposes had been filed
final 12 months alone. On January 25, 2006, Bruce V. Bigelow of the San Diego Union-Tribune used it: In November, the patent workplace mentioned it issued 165,485 patents within the fiscal 12 months that led to September — and had acquired 406,302 patent purposes, together with 323,501 purposes for trademark registration. Andy Holloway of Canadian Enterprise used the quantity on January 30, 2006: It is easy to see why the patent workplace is swamped. It acquired 406,302 patent purposes
and granted 165,485 of them final 12 months, including to a database of patents that numbers roughly seven million. On February 20, 2006, Dan O’Shea had used the quantity in Telephony: Throughout 2005, the company acquired 406,302 patent purposes and 323,501 purposes for trademark registration, in accordance with the company’s Site.
As of April 23, 2006, one will discover at web page 61 of the above-identified hyperlink a desk stating that there have been 409,532 filings in FY 2005. One is not going to discover an evidence of why the earlier variety of 406,302 is gone. Information that exist solely on an web website may be modified, with out rationalization, and thus stop to exist. On this explicit occasion, we have now proof of the earlier data, as a result of so many individuals cited to it. Nonetheless, an individual trying solely to footnote 3 of the article by Van Gilder and Kukkonen, and following the hyperlink to web page 61 is likely to be led to the conclusion that Van Gilder and Kukkonen “obtained it improper.”
In reality, the “error” of Van Gilder and Kukkonen would have been referring to a hyperlink to a website that was able to altering the numbers. These authors who cite to web web sites for numerical knowledge needs to be conscious that such quotation could also be perilous within the sense that it’s not everlasting. The state of affairs presents an attention-grabbing concern in the way in which law assessment cite checking works. If a law assessment creator utilized the 406,302 quantity and cited to Van Gilder and Kukkonen, the cite could be accepted. Nonetheless, if a law assessment creator utilized the 406,302 quantity and cited the USPTO doc, the cite ought to NOT be accepted.
On this explicit case, there’s a secondary sustantive concern as to patent law. The determine of 409,532 (or the earlier determine of 406,302) includes the mixture of utility patent purposes AND design patent purposes. Sometimes, in things like the controversy on how excessive the patent grant charge is, one seems to be solely at utility purposes. Taking the earlier knowledge as introduced, one would discover a grant charge of 165,485/406,302 = 40.7%, minuscule compared to the 97% quantity as soon as alleged by Quillen and Webster, or the 85% quantity accepted by Lemley and Moore within the article “Ending Abuse of Patent Continuations.”
