BEFORE THE

UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE

PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE

\- - - - -

PUBLIC HEARING ON

ISSUES RELATED TO THE IDENTIFICATION

OF PRIOR ART DURING THE EXAMINATION

OF PATENT APPLICATION

\- - - - -

MONDAY, JUNE 28, 1999

\- - - - -

The hearing was convened in the Nob Hill

Room, Marriott Hotel, San Francisco, California, at

9:00 a.m., Q. TODD DICKINSON, Acting Assistant

Secretary of Commerce and Acting Commissioner for

Patents and Trademark, presiding.

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

PRESENT:

NICHOLAS GODICI,

Acting Commissioner for Patents.

U.S. Patent and Trademark Office

STEPHEN KUNIN,

Deputy Assistant Commissioner for Patent Policy

U.S. Patent and Trademark Office

STEPHEN WALSH, ESQ.

Office of the Solicitor

United States Patent and Trademark Office

STAFF PRESENT:

ELIZABETH SHAW

VANESSA MOORE

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

A G E N D A

PAGE

OPENING REMARKS 4

Q. TODD DICKINSON

Acting Assistant Secretary of Commerce

Acting Commissioner of Patents and Trademark

STATEMENT OF

KEITH STEPHENS, ESQ. 11

Hickman, Stephens & Coleman

KENYON S. JENCKS, ESQ. 30

Registered Patent Attorney

JEFFREY BRANDT, ESQ. 44

Senior Vice President and

Counsel for Intellectual Property and Licensing

Walker Digital

PHILIP H. ALBERT, ESQ. 62

Townsend, Townsend & Crew

GREGORY AHARONIAN 75

DALE L. RITTER 109

Independent Inventor

ROBERT P. SABATH, President 115

Silicon Valley Intellectual Property

Law Association

SHERM FISHMAN 123

Small Entity Patent Owner\'s Association

DAVID R. CLEVELAND, ESQ. 134

Minnesota Intellectual Property Law

Association

JOHN F. SCHIPPER, ESQ. 148

Sabath & Truong

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

4

P R O C E E D I N G S

9:05 a.m.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY DICKINSON: Let\'s get

started.

My name is Todd Dickinson. I\'m the Acting

Assistant Secretary of Commerce, and the Acting

Commissioner of Patents and Trademark. And, on behalf of

the Patent and Trademark Office, I want to welcome you all

today, and thank you for coming, taking time out of what

I am sure are busy schedules on a bright, beautiful Monday

morning, to be in this rather cavernous ballroom.

We are all very interested in hearing all your

thoughts today about the identification of prior art. Let

me assure you that all of your thoughts will be very

carefully considered.

Let me first start by introducing our panel. In

addition to myself, we have Nicholas Godici, who is the

Acting Assistant Commissioner for Patents. We have Steve

Kunin, who is the Deputy Assistant Commissioner for Patent

Policy; and Steve Walsh, who is here today representing

the Solicitor\'s Office.

Some of the most rapid recent progress in

emerging technologies has occurred right here in Silicon

Valley region. Since 1994, in fact, the Santa Clara

County has replaced Boston as the U. S. metropolitan area

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

5

to which the most utility patents are granted every year.

This area is a research center that attracts engineers,

scientists and investors from all over the world.

Explosive growth here has resulted in many new products

and methodologies from arts as varied as agriculture,

biotechnology and the computer and software industries.

The Clinton-Gore Administration is committed to

increasing the quality and efficiency of the patent

examination process, and a key part of that is identifying

the best, most-material, relevant prior art. This is key

to maintaining and improving our quality and serving our

customers better.

To that end, we are constantly expanding the

resources available to our examiners for searching and

locating that prior art. However, rapid progress in

emerging technologies continues to challenge the PTO\'s

ability to access the most current information that

demonstrates the state of that art. In some

well-established art, the PTO\'s U.S. and foreign patent

databases may provide sufficient relevant information to

show what experts in the field are already aware of and

what the state of the art is.

Currently, the examiners have the ability to

search, from their own desktop work station, approximately

900 different databases. That includes tech searches for

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

6

over 2 million U.S. patents, over 4 million Japanese

patent abstracts, and 3 million EPO patent abstracts, and

over 9 million foreign patent documents in the Derwent\'s

database. They also have access, through an image search

system that includes all U.S. patents, all Japanese

published applications, and over 7 million EPO documents.

In addition, there are hundreds of specialized databases

that contain technical and scientific literature \-- the

so-called \"non-patent literature,\" or NPL. They provide

patent examiners with the needed access to abstracting

services that cover the journals used by technical workers

and scientists in many arts. If they need still more

data, the PTO provides professional information

specialists to assist examiners with specialized search

problems.

Some have made the argument that, with the

access to these databases in addition to the paper search

files which our examiners have, we, today, produce a

higher quality of search, or at least have the potential

to produce a higher quality of search than every before in

the Patent Office\'s history.

Having said all that, there are still

challenges, and that\'s why we\'re here today, particularly

with regard to non-patent literature. Computer software

is an example of an art where access to non-patent

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

7

literature is critical. Those working in the computer

software arts often publish inventions and discoveries in

non-patent literature, especially things like operating

manuals, trade publication, product literature, and

technical papers. This literature oftentimes presents the

best record of the state of the art at the time of

invention. Unfortunately, this technical information is

frequently not found in commercial databases that are

available to us at the Patent Office. If this examination

were available to examiners, it would be obviously easier

to make novelty and non-obviousness determinations.

Perhaps more than any other field, patents on

software-related inventions have been criticized in view

of this prior art, or lack of this prior art.

One of our goals today is to further our

attempts to tap into new sources of prior art, to insure

the patent applications are as thoroughly examined as they

possible can be.

As you noticed, hopefully noticed, in our

Federal Register notice calling this meeting today, we\'re

concerned about two particular aspects of this problem.

One is our own access to the databases, as I\'ve just

mentioned, where those databases are, where that

information is, and how we can best access it. We\'ve

suggested in the Federal Register notice some mechanisms

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

8

by which we can do that, but we are hopeful today to get

feedback from you all about others that we may not have

considered.

The other side of the coin is disclosure. There

is obviously a disclosure requirement at law, our

so-called Rule 56, which requires that that material prior

art, of which the applicant is aware, be disclosed to the

Office. Concerns have been raised that, in this

particular field and particular software, there may be

some compliance issues with regard to Rule 56, and this is

another area which we hope to explore today: How best to

insure that the compliance and the full disclosure to

which the Office and the public is entitled is maintained.

Let me talk a little bit about some statistics

with regard to art cited in the United States Patent

Documents. I think many of you will find it interesting.

This is data from 1997 and 1998. Of all U.S. patents

issuing in those two years, for example, in 97 percent of

those cases another, at least one other, U.S. patent was

cited; on average, 10 were cited. In Group 2700, in which

most computer arts are, there was 99 percent of them

citing U.S. patent prior art, on an average of 10, again,

documents per patent. Citing foreign patents, roughly 55

percent overall cite on average 4.3 to 4.2 documents; in

2700, it\'s roughly, for the last 2 years, roughly 40

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

9

percent. Of the applications citing non-patent

literature, it\'s roughly 36 to 37 percent citing on

average 7 documents. Again, in Group 2700, it\'s actually

somewhat higher than the average. It is roughly 45, 43 to

45, percent of those applications, of those patents

rather, that cite non-patent literature.

We\'ve also studied the types of art cited in

applicant\'s information disclosure statement submissions.

Overall, 58 percent of applications have IDSs associated

with them; 58 percent of those \-- I\'m sorry \-- 58 percent

of all applications, rather, cite U.S. patents; 23 percent

cite foreign patents; but only 19 percent cite non-patent

literature. This is roughly consistent, with the

exception of the biotechnology area, Group 1600, where 50

percent cite non-patent literature, and only 27 percent

cite U.S. patents.

I think those statistics are interesting for

today\'s discussion and indicative of the state of the art,

if you will, in the Office with regard to the disclosure

of prior art.

The challenge that we have before us is a

challenge for certain emerging technologies. For some, we

suspect that the databases and resources the PTO relies on

may be not enough to enable the patent examiner to find

the best, relevant and current prior art. They may be

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

10

aware of sources for these kinds of materials, but it can

be extremely difficult for us to discover and access them,

as we\'ve mentioned.

I would to remind everyone that written comments

will also be accepted in addition to testimony today.

Those written comments are accepted up through \-- through?

MR. KUNIN: Yes.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY DICKINSON: \-- through

August 2. Again, we encourage all interested parties to

submit their comments for consideration, and please feel

free to augment any comments that you have today in

writing.

If there are not further comments from any of

our panelists, we will get started hopefully a little

ahead of time, and maybe even finish a little bit ahead of

time.

MR. RITTER: I have a question: Are you

limiting the issues to the related issues, or are they

open?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY DICKINSON: That\'s a good

question. We are not limiting our discussion today in any

way. If you have comments with regard to the disclosure

of non-patent literature in any form or fora, we are

interested in hearing about it.

Mr. Aharonian.

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

11

MR. AHARONIAN: Is there going to be an

overhead?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY DICKINSON: I think we have

one coming.

Any further questions before we get started?

\[No response.\]

We will ask those who are testifying or

witnessing to come here to the podium. The first one we

have on our list \-- well, let me ask this: First of all,

I have Mr. Stephens \-- if you can raise your hand one more

time for me \-- Mr. Stephens, Mr. Jenckes, Mr. Brandt, Mr.

Albert, Mr. Aharonian, Mr. or Ms. Ritter, Dale Ritter?

Okay. Robert Sabath, from Silicon Valley IP Law

Association, and Sherm Fishman. Mr. Fishman? I thought I

saw Mr. Fishman. Okay.

Why don\'t we start, then, with Mr. Stephens, if

you\'re ready.

STATEMENT OF

KEITH STEPHENS, ESQ.

HICKMAN STEPHENS & COLLINS.

MR. STEPHENS: Hello, everybody. Welcome and

thank you, Commissioner Dickinson, Assistant Commissioner

Kunin, Mr. Godici, and honored guests. Today, I\'m here to

talk both as an inventor, as an attorney, and as a

counselor for businesses, with respect to this opportunity

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

12

we have with respect to prior art.

I\'m a partner here in an intellectual property

law firm that has clients that really span the gamut, with

respect to software, hardware, and hybrid, high-technology

companies, including a lot of startups, mid-sized, and

Fortune 100 corporations, providing a lot of high-paying

jobs throughout California, the United States, and the

world. And I\'m really thankful for you giving us this

opportunity to recognize the proactive work that has been

championed by the USPTO leadership, through Steve Kunin,

and implemented by the hard work of Joe Rowland, Nick

Godici, Jerry Goldberg, and others, in really taking this

bull by the horns and trying to get the right kind of

tools so that the Patent Office can catch up with the rest

of industry in searching through various areas for getting

the right art and placing them into the hands of the

examiners. The goals are congruent with ours, I think, in

seeking to create an integrated set of search tools and

procedures that are world class.

My hope is, just as the USPTO, is to provide a

leadership to the world in software and biotechnology

patent protection and will further refine our search

infrastructure and enhance the PTO\'s work product.

I think, from a perspective, three perspectives,

that I\'ll talk from, are first as an inventor; then,

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

13

second, as a patent attorney; third, as a counselor to

businesses. The first, as an inventor, I was introduced

to prior art as a engineer at IBM. There, we were told to

disclose and discuss all pertinent publications before

they were filed. And failure, we were told by the

attorneys, was basically punished by fraud, imprisonment,

and would result in the disbarment of the attorney that

was representing us. Basically, the attorneys said that

we would have the time in jail to basically explain to

them why they could no longer practice law, and so forth,

if we didn\'t give them the right references. Maybe this

was unique to IBM, but it\'s something that I\'ve carried

throughout my career in talking with inventors, and so

forth, as far as how important I think the duty of

disclosure is.

The work I did there resulted in 8 patents in

graphics and supervisory control systems. These have been

licensed to achieve strategic business goals for IBM

throughout the country and the world. And they\'ve also

been through litigation for defensive purposes. One of

the worst feelings that I\'ve even seen at a licensing

table is when you\'re sitting there trying to license a

patent and someone passes across the table a 102(b)

reference that completely is out of left field, you\'ve

never seen before, that says this patent is invalid and

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

14

indefensible. It\'s something that no one, as a

practitioner, wants to face, and would rather face, have

that reference come up, early on in the prosecution

procedure, and be able to be discussed with the examiners,

who really know what they\'re talking about.

So, from the standpoint of my current knowledge,

which has been leveraged by this knowledge of the IBM

search tool that I was exposed to very early on, the TDBs,

Technical Disclosure Bulletins, that IBM has, and are some

of the best early examples of software literature that

exists in an organized fashion \-- it\'s my understanding

that, now, the Patent Office has access to those. I think

that\'s very good. The other thing is their electronic

library. I think that the Patent Office has taken a lot

of steps towards doing this. But some of the best art

still exists out there in libraries, and such, and it\'s

often only found whenever you can commission an

independent searcher to go and take the time to go through

the library; Or, if you can, get your inventor or

technical expert to identify the work that they relied on.

To the extent that you can, I learned it was very, it was

in my best interest, as an inventor, to disclose that to

the patent attorney, and, ultimately, to disclose the

pertinent art to the Patent Office early on.

We also made extensive use of Dialogue and

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

15

Lexus, and different Japanese search tools, as well as

depending on the EPO search in the Hague, to identify some

really good art, with respect to a lot of the patents that

we filed. And these same techniques are available today,

as an attorney for our clients, to take advantage of. I

believe that the USPTO advantage of those tools, as well.

So, as an attorney, I guess, I look at the \--

from the perspective of looking at these questions, and

the first one that came up was: Is the most pertinent

prior art that I\'m aware of, and that my inventors are

aware of, is it considered by examiners? All I\'ve got to

say is I really think that it is. Basically, I use the

same tool, with respect to my inventors, that I was

exposed to. I try and paint a picture of the duty of

disclosure as being a very profound and strong duty that

requires us to disclose anything that might be pertinent.

I ask the inventors to err on the side of giving the

information to me, or to the people I\'m working with, to

make sure that we consider it. And I paint the same

picture of fraud and disbarment, and all these solid, you

know, strong feelings, that I don\'t want to share a jail

cell with these guys, and I want to make sure and get the

right art in. But, more importantly, I also paint some

stories, war stories, from licensing and litigation

efforts that went completely south because of some

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

16

references that we weren\'t even \-- that we were not aware

of, that probably should have been turned up if the right

kind of search tools had been used earlier on in the game.

These searches that we currently use include

tools like Doctor Link \-- which I understand the patent

office has access to \-- that uses a search engine from the

University of Syracuse that is AI enabled, and has a

couple of features that were important enough that I\'ve

noticed Lexus has even adopted, such as \"more-like

references,\" so that, when you\'re searching and you want

to find other references that are very similar to that, it

can pull that information up.

The other thing that we take advantage of,

though, is that there is some \-- there is a human element

in searching, and there always has been. In the search

rooms in the Patent Office, there\'s people that have been

searching there forever. But there\'s also, especially in

the software arts, it\'s good to have someone like a Greg

Aharonian \-- who is here today, and he\'ll be talking to

you \-- who I sort of label as the Ralph Nader of the

software industry. He says some really provocative

things. But what it really comes down to, and you want to

have a search done and get some obscure software

references and make sure things are covered, there\'s

nothing like getting a person out there to look through

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

17

the Harvard Libraries, the libraries at MIT, and other

places, to really find the right references. There\'s

other search services, too, that do due diligence and

other efforts, such as Near Act, and then taking advantage

of Hague searches over in Europe, if you know there\'s

something there. Moreover, there\'s an old rule that I

don\'t think too many people take advantage of anymore, and

that is: Just calling an examiner in a pertinent art unit

that you know is on point and saying: Look, you know,

what have you seen and where would you look if you were

looking for art in this area?

That sort of goes to another one of my themes

for today; and that is: The more information you share

with the PTO examiner, from the standpoint of the

background of the invention, from the standpoint of the

information disclosure statement, from the standpoint of

telephonic and personal interviews and getting the

information out to them and helping to educate them on the

particulars of the particular patent technology, the

better results you\'re going to have, and the better claims

you\'re going to have issued. I think the PTO encourages

this, as you\'ve seen in the software-related invention

guidelines, where the examiners are getting more like the

EPO examiners in cooperating and helping to identify what

is the crux of the invention, what is the patentable

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

18

subject matter, as opposed to the shaft that should be

shot out.

It\'s very important to orally communicate where

we searched and how we searched. I would not advocate,

though, putting it on record where we searched. I just

don\'t \-- I can\'t see the particularity coming to a search,

to what a definition of a search is. And, as well, there

are many inventors that just flat, depending on how it was

defined, could not afford a quote-unquote \"search\" of the

nature that the Patent Office might require. However,

with respect to whatever searching, whatever art is

uncovered, I am a firm advocate in sharing that with PTO

and talking about the particularities of it in terms of

helping everyone to understand what the invention is.

So, I guess that comes down to what even

constitutes a search and how would you get your arms

around that. I\'m not sure that \-- searching is more of an

art than it is a science. And, as such, it\'s something

that really doesn\'t lend itself to being defined with

particularity. And you don\'t want to be held to be very

ambiguous standard whenever you get into litigation or

later licensing. But I do think that we share a common

goal with the USPTO; and that is: To issue the best

patents and not be surprised by prior art later.

When I\'m speaking with examiners, I\'m very

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

19

careful to tell them that I\'m not interested in a paper

patent. I\'m interested in getting as much art out on the

record as possible; and, whatever they find, I want to

talk about and only, you know obtain the claims that I\'m

entitled to. I think the examiners really need our full

cooperation based on their time constraints, too. They

really don\'t have the time to get in thoroughly and, you

know, search through all of the information that\'s

available throughout the world, especially related to

software-related inventions. But I think it\'s a very

critical element of searching, which is: The examiners do

do an independent search in addition to what we do. It\'s

important that they continue to have this independent

search responsibility to subsidize the efforts that we

might make.

So, I guess that brings the second question; and

that is: Applicants are required today, and do, I think,

supply the most pertinent prior art that they\'re aware of.

It\'s in our best interest, as I\'ve talked about before.

Our worst fear is a license or litigation effort and a

102(b) reference showing up on the record. We encourage

the USPTO to utilize goal-based learning capability to

help examiners to understand how to search, where to

search, and to be more effective.

We really encourage the examiners, and would

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

20

really ask the Commissioner, that, if it\'s possible, to

send these guys out to the Silicon Valley, like they use

to, to meet the inventors and to see face-to-face the

technology and have an opportunity to get educated in the

various technologies that find their way to their desks.

And, moreover, we really applaud the continued

USPTO education by experts. We\'ve participated in

training courses at the PTO in object-oriented technology,

on internet-based telephony. Ben Serf (phonetic went a

taught a class there on encryption technology, too, with

Glen Kramer. I think more and more, to the extent that

they can leverage its experts, allow them to get before

the examining corps, these people will often come in with

a laundry list of a bibliography of different search areas

that are germane to various different technologies.

Now, as far as the current rules and procedures,

frankly, I think they work very effectively to encourage

practitioners to disclose art and to do the searching

that\'s appropriate. One thing that might be refined, with

resepct to these procedures, is to encourage this two-way

dialogue between attorneys and examiners, and encourage

examiners to engage in these kind of dialogues, to where

more and more information is provided informally and made

accessible to the Patent Office. A lot of it, I think, is

out and buried in various areas in industry. I think this

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

21

is probably the best way to get it before them.

With respect to prior art searches, I think,

typically, they are conducted. I think it\'s a matter of

how much searching is actually done. The extensiveness

and the thoroughness is basically gated by the dollars

that are available for the various patents. Some people,

you know, will have the money to spend for a very good

search, and most people in corporations do. Many of the

smaller inventors, though, they may only be able to take

advantage of the search tools provided by the PTO and

their website, or some other tools, or libraries, or

whatever. That\'s about as much as they can really get.

Now, with respect to IDSs, the 37 percent, or

whatever the number was submitted, really surprises me.

Because, in every case that we file, we put in IDSs. They

are always submitted. Moreover, we take advantage of

different procedures with respect to petitions, and other

things, to encourage, communication and to get the best

art before the Patent Office.

I think requiring everyone to do a search would

be unnecessarily stifling, especially to independent

inventors. And I think it\'s very difficult, as I\'ve

talked about before, to define what really constitutes a

search. You know, basically going to a library and

looking through a library of technical references could

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

22

constitute a search. Would you require every database

that\'s available electronically? Would you require

searching every different area of the internet? I don\'t

really know how that that would really be regulated.

I think Applicant\'s currently are already

required to submit all prior art that is pertinent to the

claimed invention, and that\'s something that I think every

practitioner that\'s been in business for any length of

time is very careful about. The key word there is

\"pertinent to the claimed invention.\" It\'s a

discretionary thing, and I think that\'s the way it should

remain.

As far as non-patent literature, it\'s

increasingly important. Independent searches, I think,

are increasingly turning up references that are pertinent.

Moreover, I\'m seeing more and more very good art coming

from the Patent Office and applied to software-related

inventions and very high-tech-related inventions as they

get more and more of these tools, and as there is more and

more communication by way of preliminary interviews, and

such, to explain what the crux of the invention is.

One of the problems with non-patent literature

is that it often is non-enabling and really doesn\'t teach

how to make and use the patented invention. And to that

extent, it\'s often cited on IDSs, but it is not cited as

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

23

the most-pertinent reference, or anything else. It\'s

something that\'s in combination.

Now, as a counselor, one of the things that I

have to do is balance the dollars associated with an

extensive search-type capability and the needs of small

inventors. To these small inventors, though, they do have

the access to having us act as counselors and cooperating

with the PTO in our \-- in what searches we do, and

discussing whatever the patent examiner might turn up; as

well as helping the examiner on where they should be

searching, as opposed to getting references that may not

be as pertinent. Most of this is communication, and it\'s

very, very important, I think, for us to communicate

effectively with the PTO, and work with them to educate

various examiners in various technologies on what the

invention really is, and helping them to understand,

fairly quickly, what the art is that we put before them.

The final thing is access to other information.

I think the best way to find information on any particular

invention is to have the lawyer, the inventor work jointly

with the USPTO and the examiners that are assigned, and

the SP, if the SP gets involved, you know, in identifying

and applying the art effectively to whatever the

particular invention is.

Those are my remarks. You all have any

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

24

questions?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY DICKINSON: Mr. Kunin?

MR. KUNIN: Thank you, Mr. Stephens for your

testimony.

I have a question that is a follow-on to a

comment that you made concerning the value and use of

external search services, in part by applicant; but, also,

I\'d like to get your comments, as they might apply to the

possibility of PTO doing the same. With respect to use of

external search services, when do you think the Office

should consider doing that? And, if we did do something

like that, how and where would we find these entities that

would perform such services?

MR. STEPHENS: That\'s a good question. With

respect to the USPTO doing independent searching, I guess

it would be a very difficult thing for you all, first off

all, to come up with an independent assessment of the

various search services that are available. I think that,

should you choose to do that, you\'d have to deal with it

under the current infrastructure that you have, just like

anything else that you were taking a contractor to do work

for you. I think, as such, it would be a very difficult

thing for you to manage. But to the extent that you

could, I guess the thing you would have to do is poll the

community and take bids, and start finding out, you know,

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

25

who the people that would be willing to do it, would do

it, and then assess the people based on examiner\'s input,

based on the quality of the searches and what you found.

Also, on the input of the attorneys that the art was

applied back to, as far as the assessment of how pertinent

that art was versus the art that the examiners had turned

up on their own.

As examiners, one of the beauties of this is

that this isn\'t the first time I think that new technology

has been faced with having a problem of identifying prior

art. I think one of the nice things about it is that it

is a self-correcting problem because, as you have more and

more body of issued patents, I think you\'re going to have

more and more a body of technical disclosure that\'s

available to the examiners in a form that they do know how

to search, that they\'ll be able to apply that very

effectively and be able to search and identify the art

that they need for various patents.

However, now, as far as how, as a private

practitioner, to identify who to use for effective

searches, and everything, one of the aspects that I

personally utilize was following what people were saying

about different searchers on the internet, and what they

were finding. The real proof was in having them actually

do a search, or two, and seeing what they turned up. I

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

26

think that\'ll be the same thing with the USPTO will have

to do.

MR. KUNIN: I had a follow-up question in

relationship to whether you had any experience with filing

applications with the Japanese Patent Office. The

Japanese Patent Office, for a given percentage of their

applications, employ a quasi-governmental organization,

whose acronym is IPCC, to contract out some of the

searching. I was going to ask if you have some experience

with that, in dealing with the Japanese Patent Office,

what kind of experiences in terms of how satisfied you

were with that type of work product that you saw as a

result of use of these outside contractors?

MR. STEPHENS: With respect to the Japanese and

the searches that were performed by outside contractors, I

think they were up against a pretty steep bar there.

Because, one of the things, most of the filings that I\'m

associated with are really cutting, if not bleeding, edge

technology of where people are going. And a lot of it is

dealing with software and with high-tech electronic stuff,

where the art that they\'ve been able to identify has

mostly been not all that pertinent.

I can tell you, though, that with respect to

software that I have had searched here, and I have made

use of various different outside search capabilities, I

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

27

have gotten mixed results: some very, very good art

that\'s been turned up. Mostly, though, it\'s been

additional art to be cited to the Office as opposed to

being a 102(b) type of a reference.

So, I don\'t know if that answers your question,

but that\'s been my experience.

MR. GODICI: Mr. Stephens, I want to really

thank you for taking time to be here today. It really is

helping us out.

You mentioned two things \-- and I\'ll be real

quick \-- with respect to \-- you mentioned the fact that

examiners weren\'t getting out, so to speak, on these field

trips. We call it the \"Examiner Education Program,\" you

know, to visit industry, and so on and so forth. Maybe

this is a time to put in a plug. We are attempting to

revitalize that program. We have had a program over the

last few years, but it\'s been very limited, based on our

budget situation. However, Todd is very interested in

revitalizing that program and we hope to get the

cooperation of you all to help us do that.

The second thing you talked about was coming in

and putting on some educational opportunities for patent

examiners, and I guess my question is:

1\. Do you feel that that\'s worked out?

2\. How can we identify further opportunities to

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

28

bring folks in to help us with technical education of our

examiners?

MR. STEPHENS: Yeah. I think, in the case where

we\'ve done education for the Patent Office it\'s been good,

both for us and for the executives that we brought in to

do the education. I think that the PTO has value because

these people, you know, were told ahead of time that, you

know, basically what the examiners do for a living, and

brought in just an extensive bibliography and a time line

that showed the progression of prior art in the particular

technologies the examiners could use. But it was also of

value from the standpoint of just getting them up to speed

on various technical aspects and the different vocabulary

that is utilized to communicate in the technology. Many

different words are often used for the same thing. One of

the things that all three of these presenters did was to

give a glossary of synonyms and terms that were used to

help examiners understand the various subtleties of the

technologies.

The thing that was carried back was that the

executives really got a sense that the examiners were

trying to do a good job, you know, with the tools that

they have, and trying to really identify the right art to

apply and trying to understand the technology. So there

was a two-way communication that was very helpful. And,

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

29

in all three of the cases, there were, you know, extensive

filings associated with it, so it was helpful going on,

and they had a resource that they call and ask questions

of.

Does that answer your question?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY DICKINSON: Let me ask you

one question, Mr. Stephens. If I heard your testimony, I

understand you would oppose us requiring a search. How

would you feel about requiring an applicant to state

whether or not a search had been conducted: and, if a

search had been conducted, whether they had to disclose

all or a material part of the results of that search?

MR. STEPHENS: Well, I think I\'d oppose that,

too. And the reason, the bottom line, is \-- let me

clarify that. I don\'t oppose disclosing whether a search

has been done and disclosing the contents of the search

and where someone searched, and everything along those

lines, as long as the information is shared with the

examiner informally, such that you\'re giving them

information as to where you searched, how you searched,

what you found, in the hopes that they will use that and

help them to do their search and to follow on to

supplement what you\'ve searched.

The problem is: There is so much art out there

that there\'s no way that any human that I know of \-- and

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

30

that includes Greg out there \-- that any person could say

that they\'ve searched everywhere. No matter how

extensive, no matter how much funding, no matter what,

there is always the possibility that there\'s another

reference out there, or that the reference wasn\'t there

when you were searching in the particular areas, or

whatever it might be. I mean, it\'s the old thing when you

go to the shoes. It used to be that you could search the

shoes and you\'d find examiners and references, and they

put foreign references, publication, and such in there:

but there was always the possibility that the patent was,

you know, one of the patents wasn\'t in the shoes.

So there\'s no way to really, formally go on the

record that you\'ve searched everywhere and every thing in

a particular area with a hundred percent certainty, and

that\'s the standard that you\'re going to get held to

whenever you get to litigation.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY DICKINSON: Thank you.

Any other questions from the panel?

\[No response.\]

Thank you very much. I\'ll try to stay on time

today. Thank you very much, Mr. Stephens. Appreciate it.

Next witness scheduled is Kenyon S. Jenckes.

//

//

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

31

STATEMENT OF

KENYON S. JENCKES, ESQ.

REGISTERED PATENT ATTORNEY

MR. JENCKES: Good morning.

My name is Kenyon Jenckes. I\'m a patent

attorney, and I\'m here today to address Questions 6 and 10

of the Notice for this public hearing.

Question 5 asks whether applicants should be

required to conduct prior art search and submit

corresponding search results, including where they

searched, to the PTO when filing the application.

Question 10 asks whether the most relevant prior

art is being identified during patent examination, and to

provide any suggestions to obviate this problem.

I submit that, considering the quality of data

bases \--

ASSISTANT SECRETARY DICKINSON: Could I ask you

just to speak up a little closer to the mic?

MR. JENCKES: Oh, certainly. Sorry.

I submit that, considering the quality of

databases \-- is that all right? \-- and search tools now

available to the public, and the time constraints faced by

examiners, applicants can do considerably better searches

than currently being done in the PTO given the proper

incentives and guidelines.

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

32

The vehicle I\'m proposing to provide these

incentives and guidelines is based on the Petition to Make

Special, based on a prior search under 1.102(d) of the

Rules of Practice. However, the unlike this Petition to

Make Special, the required search would be more extensive

and documented in detail. No petitioner fee would be

required. No discussion of the references prior to

examination would be required, and the application would

receive some type of expedited examination, if not special

status. The applicant would document the search which

would be made according to a prescribed methodology in a

set of databases identical or equivalent to those

presently used in the PTO.

We are here to talk about perceived problems

with quality of searches in the PTO. Ironically, the

problem arises from the success of the PTO and U. S.

patent systems. It thas always been the goal of the

patent system to increase the public store of useful

knowledge directly, by enticing inventors to patent their

inventions and thereby disclose them to the public; and

indirectly, by promoting technology and useful arts

generally. The patent system has had extreme success in

both areas.

The number of U. S. patent applications being

filed has increased dramatically in recent years, and the

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

33

amount of technical information generally available

increases at an incredible rate. With all this

information available, a thorough search requires more

time and effort than ever before. Yet examiners are faced

with an increased backlog of applications to examine.

Naturally, these two factors have negatively affected the

quality of searches and the speed at which applications

can be examined.

Examiners can realistically only dedicate a

limited amount of time to a search. Consequently,

although the PTO has gone to great lengths to provide

numerous search tools to the examiners to use, these tools

are not always used consistently or to their greatest

effectiveness.

Thanks to advances in information technology,

particularly the internet and CD ROMS, the tools necessary

to do a thorough search are now readily available to

applicants. The Automated Patent System used by examiners

in the PTO is an electronic database that provides full

text searching of patents with advanced search techniques.

It even provides for a virtual manual search in which the

front pages of patents can be quickly scanned on the

computer screen. This type of search is extremely

valuable when searching mechanical arts, and, in the past,

could only be performed at the Patent Office, flipping

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

34

through actual patents stored in shelves called \"shoes,\"

arranged by subclass. This service is now available to

the public for a fee at a limited number of sites, and a

similar service is available commercially by a company

named Corporate Intelligence.

Other search tools used by the PTO, such as

Derwent\'s World Patent Index and Chemical Abstracts, are

readily available to to the public for a fee, as well as

numerous other comprehensive databases.

An applicant using these tools, and given the

proper incentive and guidelines, could invest more time in

a prior art search than could an examiner, thereby

allowing applicants to do an even better job than the PTO

in performing the search.

There are several advantages to having an

applicant conduct a thorough prior art search upon which

the examination of his or her application is based:

First, higher quality searches would provide

stronger patents, which would benefit the public by

guaranteeing only deserving patents are given grants.

Second, it would benefit the PTO by reducing the

time necessary to examine applications.

Third, it would benefit applicants and

practitioners by giving them greater certainty as to the

references they will face during prosecution and by

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

35

reducing the time in which their patent issues and can be

enforced.

Question 6 asks whether applicants should be

required to perform a prior art search. A thorough prior

art search requires skill and a significant investment in

time and effort, as well as access to the proper

resources. A cursory or improperly performed search is of

little value to the applicant or the Patent Office.

In the interest of those pro se applicants,

independent inventors, and small entity applicants, with

limited resources and training, the PTO should not require

applicants to conduct their own search. It would serve as

a barrier to filing for a large number of applicants.

However, an incentive to do a thorough search, and

guidelines to insure the search is completed effectively,

could improve the quality of searches, achieving the dual

goals of increasing the strength of patents issued and

decreasing average pendency in the PTO.

A tool for providing such an incentive already

exists. An applicant may file a Petition to Make Special

based on a prior search under 37 CFR 1.102(d). Under this

rule, an applicant can have \--

ASSISTANT SECRETARY DICKINSON: Mr. Jenckes, can

I \-- once again \--

MR. JENCKES: I\'m sorry.

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

36

ASSISTANT SECRETARY DICKINSON: I suffer from

sometimes the same challenge \--

MR. JENCKES: Right.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY DICKINSON: \-- which is

speed of my testimony. Would you just help us out a

little bit and maybe just \--

MR. JENCKES: I\'ll make an extreme effort.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY DICKINSON: Okay. This is a

very important section of your testimony.

MR. JENCKES: You can also have my notes when I

leave.

Under this rule, an applicant can have his or

her application placed in turn for examination ahead of

most others by filing a petition with a fee of \$130;

performing a prior search and documenting the search areas

and databases in which the search was performed;

submitting copies of the most relevant references found in

the that search; and providing a detailed discussion of

how the claims are patentable over the identified

references. This procedure benefits the examiner by

relieving the examiner of the burden of doing a search,

and benefits the applicant by increasing the speed at

which the application is examined. However, this

procedure isn\'t utilized often because several of the

requirements make it unattractive to applicants and

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

37

practitioners.

The petition is a deterrent, in part due to the

the fee; but, more importantly, because many practitioners

feel the additional time needed to route and process the

application through the Petitions Office can actually

retard examinatioon. Further, most practitioners are

strongly adverse to discussing or characterizing prior art

on the record before they have to. They fear it will

haunt them later in the form of a file wrapper estoppel,

and they will be held to that prior characterization even

if it was based on a mistaken reading of the reference.

Also, the public has an interest in having a thorough

search performed and the procedure provides no check that

the check was performed properly. All that is required is

identification of the search areas and databases used, not

the strategy used in selecting those search areas and

databases or the manner in which they were searched.

The Petition to Make Special, based on prior

search, is a useful procedure and could be made more

attractive and effective by increasing the requirements

for the search and decreasing the requirements for filing.

The procedure I\'m proposing is one that offers an

applicant expedited examination in exchange for the

applicant performing a prior art search that would serve

as a sufficient and fair basis for examination.

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

38

To implement the procedure, an applicant would

file his application without petition or petition fee;

but, rather, a form that requires the applicant to

document the search step by step; provide detailed lists

of the results of the database searches; and require the

applicant to produce a limited number of references that

the application considers to be the most relevant art.

All good searches follow a similar methodology:

One defines the invention in terms of its

elements.

One defines analogous technologies by

considering other inventions that have elements similar to

that of the subject invention in terms of function,

structure and use.

One then determines the U. S. and international

subclasses in which such inventions are classified and

searches those subclasses, perhaps in conjunction with

appropriate keywords, in U. S. and foreign patent

databases.

One also searches for non-patent literature

using advanced text-string keyword searches in databases

appropriate to that technology.

Under the proposed procedure, the applicant

would complete a form that follows the basic methodology

of a thorough search. When completing the form, the

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

39

applicant would record the technologies considered

analogous and the specific keywords and text-strings used

in searching the various databases. In doing so, the

applicant would describe the search strategy and provide

results from the database searches by providing \"hit\"

lists obtained from the searches. The hit lists are

printouts idenfifying all the documents retrieved in the

search by patent number and patent title, or publication

title. Since all databases are not created equal, the

procedure would require the search to be performed on the

highest quality databases and identify those databases by

name or by required characteristics.

The applicant would file his or her application

with the form, the hit lists, and a limited number of

references from the hit lists considered most relevant,

and any other non-patent or patent publications he knows

about. Limiting the number of references produced

prevents the applicant from drowning the examiner in less

relevant art. Including the detailed hit lists as a part

of the record deters applicants from hiding references or

failing to identify the most relevant references obtained

in the search.

Once filed, the examiner could check this form

to insure the search was done in a logical and thorough

manner. If so, the policy would be that the examiner

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

40

places the application ahead of its turn, to some degree,

and would not be required to perform any further search.

This would save time for the examiner, and, if found

attractive to applicant and used in a large number of

cases, would decrease average examination time in the PTO.

Practitioners would use this procedure. Some

practitioners already regularly use the Petition to Make

Special based on a prior search to expedite prosecution.

Most practitioners regularly perform some type of prior

art search prior to drafting an application. Having the

most relevant references available allows the practitioner

and applicant to determine if the invention merits

pursuing a patent. It also allows the practitioner to

draft the claims in a manner that avoids the prior art in

anticipation of examination.

Although the proposed search may require more

money and effort to perform, it would be worthwhile to

applicants and practitioners for two reasons: (1) The

patent would issue sooner; and (2) the practitioner would

know, with certainty, which references he or she will face

during prosecution, and, therefore, have more confidence

when initially drafting claims and advising the applicant

of receiving the patent on the invention and the scope of

such a patent.

In conclusion, a new procedure in which the PTO

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

41

provides applicants the opportunity and guidelines for

performing a prior art search of such high quality that an

examination would be fairly, could be fairly, based on it

in exchange for expedited examination would be attractive

to applicants and practitioner; and, if widely employed,

would achieve the dual goals of improving the quality of

searches on which examinations are based and reducing

average examination time per application.

Thank you.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY DICKINSON: Thank you, Mr.

Jenckes. Appreciate it very much. As I indicated, one of

our goals was to get additional thoughts that people has

beyond what we\'d raised. So I appreciate your bringing

this idea to our attention.

Are there any questions from the panel? Mr.

Kunin.

MR. KUNIN: Thank you, Mr. Jenckes, for your

testimony. I wanted to explore, a little bit more with

you, your idea.

You framed your idea in a balance between

incentives to the applicant versus some of the

disincentives that currently exist, or might otherwise

exist. On the incentive side, you indicated that

expedited prosecution of the case was important, or the

early examination, taking the case out of turn; and, also,

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

42

the elimination of any kind of a petition fee for

accelerated examination. On the disincentive side, you

did indicate, to some degree, the aspect of this is an

additional cost that would be incurred by applicants in

performing the search and producing the results.

The question that I have related really to the

current situation with respect to Rule 56, and the fear

that some practitioners have regarding inequitable conduct

charges. And I was wondering whether you had any thoughts

as to whether something might be done, or should be done,

with respect to creating, perhaps, a bit of a shield to

people who might employ your proposed procedure, so that

maybe they would have a bit of a higher threshold before

they could be attacked for an inequitable conduct charge.

MR. JENCKES: And that would be based on? In

terms of the procedure I\'m setting out, or in general?

MR. KUNIN: Let\'s take your procedure, and, as a

further incentive, you were to consider something with

respect to some aspect of Rule 56 in terms of shielding

one from inequitable conduct charges, who had faithfully

followed your procedure. Do you have any thoughts with

respect to whether that is a good idea, bad idea, and if

it might be something that you find favor with, how that

might work?

MR. JENCKES: Well, I think that inherently, by

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

43

documenting your search, and if the Patent Office accepts

it, you\'ve done your duty. If you\'ve documented what

you\'ve done, and all the search results come up, that can

be looked at later on as part of the record, you just have

to make the best decision.

As in terms of shielding, I mean it\'s always a

matter of \-- it\'s subjective, you know, which is the most

relevant that you\'re going to choose to produce from your

searches. But that\'s something that applicants have

always faced. I don\'t think going by this procedure would

really change any of that. It actually \-- of course, they

would be a bit concerned about it; but you would have to

make a strong effort. I think it\'s a worthwhile effort

and one that\'s needed.

So, I really haven\'t \-- I can\'t say an extra

shield. I just think the fact that this is documented and

you\'ve done your duty, it\'s been accepted, it should come

out well for him later, for the applicant.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY DICKINSON: Any other

questions? Mr. Godici.

MR. GODICI: Just one clarifying question.

You talked about the incentive of moving an

application forward for prosecution if the applicant

submitted a search. I guess my question is the standard

of that search. You even suggested that possibly, if we

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

44

met such a standard, the examiner may not have to do a

search, I believe.

MR. JENCKES: And, in fact \-- I\'m sorry.

MR. GODICI: I guess my question is: (1) Would

the standard of search that you\'re talking about be

something that we would work out and publish and make via

rule making; or, is it something that the examiner would

judge when you see the submission and then decide whether

to grant the incentive? I didn\'t know which you had in

mind.

MR. JENCKES: Already I\'ve performed several

searches in which the examiner hasn\'t done any further

search; or, perhaps he has and hasn\'t produced anything

more. So it\'s happening already.

Under this procedure I\'m proposing, I think

there would be even more thorough searches being done,

that the examiner could then rely on it. So I think they

already do many time. Especially if you\'ve gone to

through a PCT route and there\'s been a search performed by

another search authority, a lot of times the examiners

don\'t go further.

In terms of expediting prosecution, I don\'t

think it should be special. But, perhaps, a policy, a

ratio, of doing two of these for one of the others, since

you\'re saving so much time on the search. And it would be

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

45

discretionary, to a certain extent, on the examiner to

determine if the search is thorough enough for him to act

on. But I think in most cases, if he can see it and

people will have used the professional searcher, it would

meet that standard.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY DICKINSON: Any further

questions?

\[No response.\]

Thank you very much.

MR. JENCKES: Thank you.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY DICKINSON: We appreciate

your taking the time, Mr. Jenckes.

Our next witness is Jeffrey Brandt. Mr. Brandt

is the Senior Vice President and Counsel for IP and

Licensing of Walker Digital Corporation.

Thank you, Mr. Brandt, for being with us today.

STATEMENT OF

JEFFREY BRANDT

SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT AND COUNSEL FOR

INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY AND LICENSING

WALKER DIGITAL CORPORATION

MR. BRANDT: Good morning. I am here today

representing Walker Digital Corporation.

As a matter of background, Walker Digital

Corporation is a research and development laboratory that

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

46

was founded by its president, Jay Walker, in 1995. Walker

Digital Corporation currently employs over 30 research and

development professionals, with a particular focus on

inventing and improving business processes. Walker

Digital Corporation is the developer of processes

currently practiced by an affiliate company,

Priceline.com.

I\'d like to begin my testimony today with some

general comments about the role of the PTO in the

examination process; and, then provide some specific

comments on issues raised in the Federal Register notice

identifying the hearing. I\'d also like to reserve the

opportunity to supplement these remarks with written

comments at a later date.

First, Walker Digital Corporation places great

importance on the role the United States Patent and

Trademark Office in issuing thoroughly examined and valid

patents. We feel quite strongly that the more thorough

the examination of an application is within the Patent

Office the greater the service the Office performs for the

public. Better examination does not just benefit the

Patent Office; it benefits the industry, as a whole.

Poorly examined patents create many problems for the

industry. The most significant problem is unnecessary

litigation, including all of the accompanying costs to

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

47

resolve issues, such as whether a patent is valid, who is

entitled to the patent, and what freedom of action the

company had within their area of business. Poorly

examined patents afford less than their true value to

their owner. And, finally, poorly examined patents

represent less than the best capabilities of the PTO

examining corps.

Walker Digital Corporation believes that the

best patent examinations result from the cooperative

effort between the applicant and the PTO. To this end, we

need our own search in every application we filed with the

Patent Office. Our searches include information we

discover on the internet, materials we discover by

searching a variety of information databases, and also

materials found by combinations of online and traditional

patent document searches. When necessary, we will search

academic resources, such as public dissertations,

published dissertations and textbooks.

Subsequent to searching, we provide all prior

art we consider material to the application to the Office

in accordance with Rule 56. We made ourselves available

for, and, in fact, we actively solicit and encourage

interactions with examiners during the examination

process. We have found that this process facilitates an

effective examination of our applications by the PTO.

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

48

Through these efforts, we recognize the

challenge presented to all parties in finding, identifying

and characterizing the best prior art. In fact, given the

explosive growth of information and the expansive

definition of patentable subject matter recently clarified

by the courts, we face perhaps an unprecedented challenge

in searching and identifying prior art. While this

problem may appear more vexing with respect to emerging

technologies, the sheer amount of information available in

every area of technology makes every examination of every

invention a challenge. We see nothing in particular in

today\'s emerging technologies that make them any more

challenging than other technologies. We believe that,

with the availability of the appropriate tools and

processes, and with the cooperative effort between the PTO

and the applicant, well-examined and valid patents can

issue in all art areas.

While I don\'t have time to address all of the

questions set out in the Notices for this hearing, I\'ll

now address those questions where I believe we can provide

useful commentary.

In Question 4, it is asked whether prior art

searches are typically conducted before filing a patent

application with the PTO.

As I have noted in my earlier comments, the

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

49

answer is, \"Yes,\" with respect to Walker Digital

Corporation. Our researchers rely on a combination of

freely available information resources, such as patent

databases and web page search engines accessible, without

charge, through the internet, along with proprietary

databases, such as Lexus, for news and information

articles; and Derwent for patent searching.

In this regard, we believe that the resources

available through the internet enable most any applicant

to perform a useful pre-filing search. These resources

are readily available and many of these resources are

essentially free to users. They provide access to a vast

and useful information database, including news

publications and press releases, which may far predate the

publication of patent documents, and which may also be

particularly useful in searching for emerging

technologies.

The internet also provides free access to

several patent databases where applicants can perform

online searching through both U. S. and foreign patent

documents.

In Question 5, it is asked whether information

disclosure statements are frequently submitted, and which

types of prior art documents are included.

It is our practice to submit information

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

50

disclosure statements in accordance with Rule 56. These

information statements include, where they are material,

combinations of U. S. patents, foreign patent documents,

and non-patent literature. The non-patent literature may

include, for example, news and journal articles, product

literature, internet web pages, conference papers, and all

or portions of relevant texts and treatises.

In Question 6, it is asked whether applicants

should be required to conduct a prior art search and

submit corresponding results, including where they

searched when filing a patent application. While we

voluntarily conduct such searches of our own volition, we

do not believe it is in the best interest of the public

for the PTO to mandate such searches. We believe this is

the first step of a slippery slope, where it will

ultimately be impossible to determine where an applicant\'s

responsibility to find prior art does end.

Further, due to the explosive growth and

constant changes in online databases, it is often

impossible, despite detailed records, to recreate a

search. Problems, such as these, will ultimately create,

we believe, more issues than would be resolved through a

mandatory search process.

We believe it is important to recognize that

Rule 56 was created with the intent of capturing

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

51

information that was in possession of the patent applicant

when they filed their application. We submit there are

important reasons for maintaining this philosophy. While,

as I noted above, many resources are available to

inventors, not every inventor has access to the relevant

materials for their particular technology. Not every

inventor has the personal ability to perform a search or

the financial means to compensate a professional searcher.

Most importantly, we believe, again, that it would be

difficult or impossible to adequately define the

boundaries of a mandatory search requirement. Even a

well-documented search strategy may be impossible to

recreate. Short of a court decision, an applicant might

never know if he fulfilled his obligations under such a

mandate.

Question 6 goes on to ask if applicants should

be required to disclose whether or not a search was

conducted.

We see nothing to be gained by such a

requirement. Without further information, the mere fact

as to whether a search was conducted is of no practical

use to the PTO. We believe the requiring of the

submission of this limited information would only serve to

confuse the examination process and the file history.

Imposing such a requirement would only present new

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

52

opportunities to third parties that wished to challenge

the patent, wish to challenge the grant of the patent, on

procedural rather than substantive grounds.

Question 7 raises the issue of whether an

applicant should be required to submit all prior art

relied upon during the drafting of the claims of an

application.

We believe that the current standard of

materiality, with respect to prior art, is adequate and

sufficient as it stands. A requirement to supply all

prior art considered during the drafting of the patent

claims would present no benefits to the Office, as it

would simply produce a large volume of immaterial

information that would have to be considered by the patent

examiner. We see no benefit in requiring submission of

information that is not material to the question of

patentability and which would only complicate the job of

patent examiners and diminish their ability to efficiently

examine applications.

Question 8 asks if applicants should be required

to submit all non-patent literature directed to the same

field of invention attributed to, authored by, or

coauthored by, the applicant.

For essentially the same reasons as I\'ve

answered with respect to Question 7, we don\'t believe this

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

53

would be a helpful or desirable change in practice. We

believe the current standard of materiality effectively

differentiates immaterial information from relevant and

material prior art. An additional requirement to disclose

immaterial information would place an unbounded and

unnecessary obligation on the applicant. The fact that

such information is not material to the examination

process almost by definition means that it will increase

the work of the examining staff, while not adding value to

the examination process.

I\'d like now to address some issues not raised

by the questions posed in the notice.

One area where we believe there is room for

improvement is in the identification and verification of

publication dates and content of non-patent prior art that

is not published in a traditional form. In particular,

with respect to much of the content on the internet, it

is difficult to identify and independently confirm when

the information became publicly available and, thus,

gained the status as prior art. It\'s also difficult to

determine what its exact content may or may not have been

at the time that it was prior art.

Without an exact and confirmed date of

publication, it becomes difficult or impossible to

determine if otherwise relevant information is actually

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

54

prior art. We believe the PTO can take some steps to

improve this situation. For example: The Office can

provide guidelines for applicants to cite such

information. Such guidelines would contribute to the

establishment of consistent and defensible standards for

evaluating such information as prior art. To the extent

that the Patent Office, working alone or in cooperation

with its customers, can address this issue. It would

provide a substantive improvement, in our opinion, to the

examination process.

As a second matter, I\'d like to address that of

time afforded to the examiners to sort, analyze and apply

the most-relevant prior art.

As we all know, the quantity of material prior

art varies substantially from application to application.

A one-size-fits-all approach to patent examination doesn\'t

always provide sufficient time for an examiner to conduct

a comprehensive search and examination in every

application. Time restraints may force the examiner to

spend additional uncompensated time to do the job that the

examiner believes is necessary. And we have found that,

of course, they will. We\'ve found that examiners are

generally very diligent and enjoy working with us to

accomplish a good end.

Recognizing this, we believe that everyone

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

55

involved would be well served by practices that insure

that an adequate average time is allotted to examiners to

search and examine cases, with additional time for those

cases that demand extra effort.

As a final matter, I would like to address the

searching on non-patent information.

As I\'ve mentioned previously, we believe that

the resources exist to perform quality searches on all

technologies. These resources will likely include, in

most instances, non-patent materials. To the extent that

relevant prior art is not within the patent materials, it

may be overlooked for a variety of reasons, including

databases that are not readily known to a searcher,

databases having indexing and searching characteristics

not readily understood by a searcher, with terminology

that requires complicated or nonobvious keyword search

strategies.

We would encourage the Office to pursue an

initiatives directed to improving the searchability of

non-patent materials. And we have some suggestions,

useful efforts in this area might include, for example,

developing databases focused on specific fields of

technology and developing improved search engines, or

obtaining improved search engines, that simplify an

increased utility of keyword searches. We believe that

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

56

such initiatives might be developed by the PTO alone, or

in partnership with its customers.

In summary, I\'d like to reiterate that quality

examination of patents is crucial to the integrity of our

patent system. Identification of relevant prior art is

one of the most significant aspects of the quality

examination. Together, we stand at perhaps the most

challenging period in history for information

professionals.

We believe that the current rules are sufficient

to motivate the production of material prior art by

applicants, and that rule changes implementing new

requirements are neither necessary nor desirable. We do

believe, however, that improvements in access to sources

of prior art, along with certain adjustments in the PTO

examination process, can assist both customers and the PTO

in finding the best prior art.

Thank you. Can I answer any questions?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY DICKINSON: Thank you, Mr.

Brandt. Appreciate it very much.

Any questions? Mr. Kunin.

MR. KUNIN: Thank you, Mr. Brandt, for your

testimony, and also giving us some additional views that

were beyond the questions that we had posed. We very much

appreciate your thoughtfulness.

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

57

Along the line of exploring some additional

ideas, while you did say that, within the existing

framework, you feel rather satisfied and there\'s some

opportunities, however, with respect to improvement in our

searching a variety of databases.

Do you have any views in terms of other things

that we might want to consider in the future with respect

to system changes? I believe that you\'ve got familiarity

with using the European system of the post-grant

opposition procedures. Do you have any, from your own

experience, views with respect to how our process, which

involves granting of patent, which has a presumption of

validity which is overcome only by clear and convincing

evidence, versus a European system, where there\'s an

opposition proceeding that\'s available after the patent is

granted? Maybe you can share with us some of your

experiences and your advice. Thank you.

MR. BRANDT: That\'s quite a question. I\'m

afraid that it\'s always much easier to restate and insure

problem than it is to offer an exact solution to it. I

will say that there\'s a huge amount of data out there.

It\'s currently not well indexed. It\'s currently available

in many different databases. It\'s not easy to get to even

for people that spend full time doing it.

So, I would just like to kind of state the

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

58

general position that we need improved tools and access to

those databases, and training, perhaps, full-time

information professionals working to assist in this

matter, or none of us will be successful in getting

through that material.

I\'m afraid that I can\'t add \-- I can\'t answer

your question specifically as to the difference between

the opposition process in Europe, and the issuance process

in the U. S., and how those tools might be different.

Just clearly that we all need to work to improve the

access that we have to databases today.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY DICKINSON: Any other

questions? Mr. Godici.

MR. GODICI: Let me \-- just one question. You

talked about the possibility of additional time for

examiners to do searching. And I was just interested in

your thoughts with \-- we struggle with this, I struggle

with this, on a daily basis, you know, balancing resources

of a timely examination in terms of pendency or cycle

time, versus the quality and the amount of time.

Would a sacrifice in timeliness be worth an

increase in the amount of time the examiner has to do a

search? Is timeliness an issue for you with respect to

examination?

MR. BRANDT: Let me first state that, despite

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

59

the fact that we understand and feel the pressure that

your corps is under when we work with them, that they are

very conscientious people, and we\'ve been very pleased in

our interactions with them, and the quality of the work

that we\'ve gotten back from them.

Let me answer your question directly, and say

that timeliness and, in our particular instance \-- which I

recognize is not true of all inventors \-- some additional

cost is not as relevant to us as the quality of the

examination process. We would gladly incur both some

additional time in the search process, some additional

time in the examination process, if it were necessary;

and, perhaps, some modest increase in cost in order to

improve the process.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY DICKINSON: Let me ask a

question. One of the concerns that brought us here today

was a generic concern about the quality of searching.

Yet, when we conduct our own surveys in the Office of our

customers, this past year, in particular, there\'s been

shown to be, at least in their opinion, those who answered

the survey, an increase perception in the quality of

searching \-- up by some almost 10 percent. Our customers

tell us that the searching, in their opinion, is getting

better.

Is there a disconnect there? What\'s your

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

60

opinion? Besides your current position, you\'re also a

member of the bar and talked to many of your colleagues.

What\'s your sense of the current quality of our searching

in the Office and the direction it may or may not be

heading?

MR. BRANDT: Taking just a second to digest and

think \--

ASSISTANT SECRETARY DICKINSON: Sure.

MR. BRANDT: \-- but my impression is that \-- I

have to tell you I\'ve been in this business for about 15

years. My impression of examiners is that examiners have

always been diligent in trying to find the best prior art.

I have found that they go the extra mile, in particular

when the applicant goes the extra mile, to assist them

with the process by providing a prior art search on

filing, or working with them productively during the

course of the prosecution.

So, without trying to duck the question, I would

have to say, quite honestly, that my observation has been

that, when you work to meet them half-way, the examining

corps has always worked to provide good searches. And I

think that they\'ve certainly, at the very least, which is

an admirable thing to say, kept or improved the quality of

the searches as the difficulty of searching, both the

content and the subject matter, has increased over the

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

61

intervening years.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY DICKINSON: Let me ask a

slightly different question. You indicated you felt that

Rule 56 was currently sufficient to insure that the

disclosure requirement was adequately met. When you, or

maybe the folks who work with you, or your outside

counsel, when they make that materiality determination,

how do they make it? What\'s your experience in taking a

piece of prior art and determining whether or not you feel

it\'s material under Rule 56 and should, therefore, be

disclosed?

MR. BRANDT: We err on the side of being

inclusive. We try and follow the guidelines as they\'re

set out in the rules, and as they\'re explained in the MPP.

But I will say that we do try and be inclusive. If we\'re

not particularly certain about a special or particular

piece of prior art, we will typically err on the side of

providing it to the examiner. At times, this makes for a

lengthy information disclosure statement, as we all know.

And where possible, during the prosecution process, we\'ll

work with the examiner to try and identify to him or her

what we consider to be the most significant prior art if,

in fact, there\'s a lot of it. I think we, as all of the

bar are, are always walking the edge between trying to

assist in direct corps, and not wanting to step over the

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

62

line in terms of statements that could eventually be

argued to be statements against interest.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY DICKINSON: You probably,

I\'m guessing, also have the opportunity to look at many of

your competitors\' and others\' patents and the prior art

which they cite. Would you care to comment on how you

believe the standard of materiality under Rule 56 is

complied with, generally, particularly in the arts with

which you\'re familiar?

MR. BRANDT: I would decline to comment on other

comments in the art that we work on. But I would say

that, again, since my \-- since the beginning of my

particular practice 15 years ago, what was taught to me by

my mentors was to provide all information and materials

that are material to the Patent Office, not to draft

around or do other things that perhaps had been construed

appropriate in earlier days, before I joined the bar. And

I will say, you know, the work that I\'ve done with the bar

and in my observations and experiences have been that most

practitioners try and cite material prior art. I\'m not

personally aware of and have not worked with people that,

for any reason, would withhold material prior art.

Does that answer your question?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY DICKINSON: Yes, thank you.

Any other questions?

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

63

\[No response.\]

Thank you, Mr. Brandt. Appreciate it very much.

MR. BRANDT: Thank you.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY DICKINSON: Well, I think

this is a good time for a break, particularly because I

know we have to set up the overhead projector. Should we

take it now, or what\'s your pleasure?

\[No response.\]

Why don\'t we \-- Mr. Albert, do you mind if we

take a very short break before your testimony? Then,

we\'ll set up the projector and go on from there.

We will \-- I have 22 minutes past 10. Can we

start again at 10:30 please.

\[Recess.\]

ASSISTANT SECRETARY DICKINSON: We will get

started again and try to stay on time. I\'d know like to

invite Philip Albert, from the local firm of Townsend,

Townsend & Crew to join us at the podium.

STATEMENT OF

PHILIP H. ALBERT

TOWNSEND, TOWNSEND & CREW

MR. ALBERT: Hello!

My name is Phil Albert. I\'m a partner with the

firm of Townsend, Townsend and Crew. I represent many

clients that have products and services that are

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

64

internet-related.

I notice that, in a lot of these hearings,

there\'s a particular bias. It would either be people who

can\'t seem to get their patents through the Patent Office,

and then there\'s groups that can\'t seem to avoid having

invalid patents asserted against them. So, I just want to

let you know I don\'t come here with any particular bias.

About half of my time I spend prosecuting patents, and the

other half I spend evaluating patents that get asserted

against our clients.

I hadn\'t really thought about speaking here

today until I read the text of the official notice for

this meeting. And my comments can be summarized in one

sentence: Before the Patent Office makes any decision, or

changes any rules, perform a reality check on the

decision. Now that pretty much sums it up; but, since

I\'ve been allotted 20 minutes, I\'ll elaborate.

The official notice states that the USPTO has

been criticized for containing too few references to

non-patent literature when examining software-related

patents. Well, increasing the number of non-patent

references in software-related patents sounds like a good

ides on the surface. But, in reality, it\'s not going to

get us anywhere.

How do we determine the number of non-patent

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

65

references that a patent should have? Is a patent with

six references acceptable? Do we assume a claim is

invalid if there are less than 100 non-patent references

cited?

So, before we actually set out a program to

increase the number of non-patent references in

software-related patents, we\'re first going to run into

the problem of determining, well, when is patent

software-related and subject to these special rules? I

haven\'t really come across the patent that I could say:

Okay, that must be software-related; but, if it didn\'t

have this, it wouldn\'t be. I mean, is when the point of

novelty is necessarily implemented in software? When the

point of novelty can be implemented in software? When an

element of the claim can be implemented in software? When

the specification discloses software, or just when there

is source code attached?

So, you know, in light of that, the statement

sounds great; but we need to look at the practical aspects

of what it is we\'re doing. In view of those problems, I\'d

like to suggest one way to improve the quality of prior

art cited in patents.

I noted earlier comments that some surveys have

been done and searching is getting better. But, then, I

also note that the surveys among the PTO\'s customers \--

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

66

and I\'m assuming that that means applicants and attorneys

prosecuting patents \-- we might get a different story, or

maybe get the same story, if you survey all the customers

of the Patent Office, including the public, those that are

getting the patents asserted against them. I\'m concerned

about relying on the applicant to supply the prior art in

any cases. Because it has been my experience that someone

who found out about the internet two months ago, before

filing a patent application, is more likely to be claiming

something that\'s already been done when compared with

someone who has been a researcher in the field and has had

many years of experience and is well regarded in the

field. The newcomer is going to be naturally aware of

much less prior art, so we\'re going to have the patents

that are from newcomers being searched by newcomers, and

that\'s just going to compound the problem.

Now one of the suggestions is to, well, let\'s

have applicants do part of the search and run some

database searches, provide the keywords, provide the hit

list. Well, I submit that that\'s not the time consuming

part of the searching process.

In my opinion, the one way, \-- one way; I\'ll

not say it\'s the only way \-- but one way to improve the

quality of prior art cited in patents is to separate

searching and examining. It\'s not a revolutionary

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

67

concept, but I think we can do it. And we can even keep

the quota system where currently an examiner has a fixed

amount of time, assuming they don\'t want to work for free,

to search and examine an application and do all the

interaction with the applicant. Since the examiner

doesn\'t know how much time the examination and the

interaction with the applicant is going to take, it\'s

natural that the examiner is going to do a search in as

short a time as possible so that they have enough time to

adequately examine the application and deal with what the

applicant brings up. If the examiner provides

not-so-relevant art, the rest of the process is quicker;

but, then, that ends up with less valid patents.

So, my idea is that, well, maybe we have

searchers, and the searchers are solely focused on finding

the closest prior art to the claimed invention. Then,

once they do that, their job is done. So a searcher could

be allotted a certain amount of time for each search, and

be judged on how well that time is used and how relevant

the cited art is to the claimed invention. So this would

create incentives for searchers to stick with the art that

they\'re familiar with and build up a body of knowledge.

I think anybody who has been involved in the

internet field, and patents relating to that field, will

know that. After a year or two of knowing where to look,

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

68

because there isn\'t a nice, clean database, or a nice set

of databases, knowing where to look is invaluable in

quickly determining whether there is prior art or not.

Because often the knowing whether there\'s prior art or not

depends on knowing what isn\'t out there. So that you can

look, and look, and look and not find the prior art you\'re

looking for; but, at some point, you need to have an

understanding of the field to be able to say it\'s not out

there with a reasonable certainty.

In our practice, we do that. When an applicant

comes to me, I\'m going to do that kind of search.

Especially if it\'s internet-related, I\'m going to surf the

net for awhile looking at key areas. But given that a

patent application to file typically costs an applicant

about \$10,000, we can\'t be spending \$10,000 worth of time

searching for prior art; and we\'re not going to do that.

Our primary focus, in most cases, is finding out whether

the inventor thinks it\'s novel; and, then, doing what we

can to find the prior art. But it just doesn\'t make sense

to put that burden on the applicant.

So, we provide that prior art that we do find.

But I think it really depends on the Patent Office to do

that search. We prefer to provide all the art that we can

come up with because, in litigation, you know, if there\'s

art in our files that wasn\'t presented, that\'s a problem.

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

69

If there\'s art that is considered, it makes for a stronger

patent. But, in the end, it really comes down to the

Patent Office doing the search.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY DICKINSON: Thank you, Mr.

Albert, for the testimony, very candid.

Any questions? Mr. Kunin.

MR. KUNIN: Thank you, Mr. Albert, for your

testimony.

I have a question with respect to your comment

on separating search from examination. As I\'m sure you\'re

aware, that is the main technique that is used in the

European Patent Office. Where the examiners in DG-1 are

search examiners, and examiners in the Munich Office are

substantive examiners. And the examiners in DG-1 do a

state-of-the-art search; whereas, in the actual

substantive examination, the examiners in DG-2, in Munich,

are of the mind that they really need a search based upon

their needs of examination based upon claim construction,

and how they appreciate what is claimed and what might be

claimed based upon amendments. The EPO is moving away

from separated search and examination because of the

problem that the search examiners don\'t appreciate the

problems of the substantive examiners; and the substantive

examiners aren\'t really getting what they necessarily feel

that they need, and it requires a high level of

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

70

interaction. So they\'re going to a program called \"BEST,\"

which stands roughly for bringing examination and search

together.

With this in mind, have you had any experiences

with the EPO, both as to when search has been separated

from examination, and any experience where you\'ve had

cases examined under the BEST program; and, if so, maybe

you could comment?

MR. ALBERT: I haven\'t had any cases yet

examined under the BEST program so I can\'t comment on

that. But I have found that, in many cases, when I filed

the case both in the U. S. and Europe, I get a slightly

better search from the EPO in certain fields. I also have

found that a lot of our clients actually prefer that the

approach we take to searching is to file a PCT in the U.

S. and request an EPO search, to use that both in the U.

S. case and all the international cases. And I have had

at least two cases where we were well past the prior art

that the U. S. cited, and we get the references from the

EPO, and we end up abandoning both the U. S. case and the

EPO based on that search. It is just anecdotal evidence.

I\'d also like to say that these are just my views, not of

my firm, or any of my clients that might be present.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY DICKINSON: Let me ask a

question. I\'m a little, slightly confused, I guess. Part

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

71

of your testimony, if I hear it right, concerning

particularly internet patents, if I\'m hearing it right, is

the concern that newcomers, new inventors, let\'s say, on

the internet, who may not be as familiar with the breadth

of art that\'s out there, are coming to you with patent

applications and inventions, or coming to you with

inventions that they would like rendered, presumably, into

patent applications.

MR. ALBERT: Yes.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY DICKINSON: But you\'re also

indicting that others in the art are also even more

familiar and know where the internet-related art is, and

are best positioned to provide that art. Then I think you

also indicated that it doesn\'t make \-- I think your phrase

was \"it didn\'t make sense\" for you to do a search for that

\$10,000. That the PTO should be relied upon for the

search.

I guess my broad question is: Why doesn\'t it

make sense for us to, for example, require you to make a

search? Or why doesn\'t it make sense for us to have you

tell us whether or not you did a search; and, if you did,

where you did search? If, particularly, folks who are

bringing these internet patent, internet inventions, to

you are best positioned to be able to provide that art, or

that knowledge, as opposed to, say, the Office. There

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

72

seems to be something of a disconnect. We get criticized

fairly frequently \-- I think unfairly in many cases \-- for

the knowledge and the experience and the search

capabilities of inventors in these emerging technologies.

So whey shouldn\'t we require a search?

MR. ALBERT: If you required a search for those

who have been in the industry for awhile and know what\'s

out there, you\'re going to get better search results.

And, if we have those, we supply them to the examiner.

But I don\'t think that these criticisms are necessarily

based on those patents that are filed by people who have

been in this industry for awhile. It\'s more of people who

file patents believing that they invented something

because they didn\'t see that, you know, that was tried and

given up a year ago. So it\'s more of a problem that the

cases that you really need good searches on are not filed

by people who have a good knowledge of the prior art.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY DICKINSON: Thank you. Can

you also indicate, maybe just generally in your own

experience, is your firm \-- we have Mr. Brandt come in

earlier on it \-- does your firm require a search in every

case? Or, in each application that\'s filed, do you

perform a search, and/or do you submit and IDS for every

application that\'s filed?

MR. ALBERT: No, we don\'t. It\'s, of course, our

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

73

policy that, if a client has instructions that we do

searches, we will do that. But our general advice to

someone, a client, who doesn\'t have an opinion on that, is

that, for things that are in art units that have been

around for more than 5 or 10 years, we should always do a

search because a quick patent search can be done. And

usually that ends up narrowing the scope of the invention

or causing the client to abandon the idea altogether. But

in the newer areas, searching capabilities are not really

out there that are reliable.

As another speaker commented on, well, we could

have used the database a couple of months ago, is it still

valid? We don\'t know. So there\'s not a real good

mechanism for relying on cut-and-dried, black-and-white

searches. Whereas, a searcher, an examining searcher,

would do a better job because they would know where to

look.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY DICKINSON: Do you employ

searchers, commercial search firms?

MR. ALBERT: Yes, we do.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY DICKINSON: So those, the

search firms, are the entities on which you would rely for

that kind of search you just mentioned?

MR. ALBERT: Yes. But let me say, for my

clients that are obtaining patents, we do great searches

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

74

and hire the services of great searchers. But, for the

patents that we see applied against us, we really question

whether any search is done at all.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY DICKINSON: So, but you

would still not support requiring a search, then, even for

those, to improve the quality of those cases that you

don\'t file?

MR. ALBERT: As, again, a reality check, what

counts as a search? And I don\'t think that we can

actually determine that, okay, this is what you need to do

for a search. If it\'s a medical device \-- okay? \-- you

can say search these 80 journals for that keyword; and, if

you don\'t find it, then you\'ve done your search. But,

then, if it\'s that easy, then, that\'s just something the

Patent Office can do in a couple of minutes. So, as a

practical matter, I don\'t think you\'re going to get good

searches from applicants.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY DICKINSON: Any further

questions? Mr. Walsh.

MR. WALSH: Mr. Albert, a question about the

quality of the searching. You mentioned that you had a

few cases, and I realize it was just an anecdotal remark,

where the European Office has found more pertinent art in

a couple of applications. I wonder if you have any

insights into the systematic reason why that might occur?

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

75

Are there any databases that you think the European

examiner had access to? Or, is there some other source of

information that they were accessing that we don\'t

typically access? Is there anything you could see in

those cases that would help us identify something that we

could look at for improving our own searches?

MR. ALBERT: Actually, in those two cases, it\'s

U. S. patents that were cited that weren\'t previously

cited. But I must say that I\'m very impressed with the

Patent Office increasing it\'s own searching. I\'m very

pleased to see cases where I get very good rejections

based on a couple printouts of web pages. So, I do see

that, on that end, it is the non-patent art that is

improving; but, you know, I just throw out those

anecdotes. Maybe searching should be given its own time.

Maybe it doesn\'t have to be separated, but, you know, the

time should be allocated that way.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY DICKINSON: Any further

questions?

\[No response.\]

Thank you very much, Mr. Albert.

Let me just check. I\'ll do another reality

check and find out what other, what speakers are here

today. Mr. Aharonian is here. Mr. Ritter? You\'re Mr.

Ritter. Thank you.

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

76

Mr. Sabath? Mr. Sabath, from Silicon Valley IP

Law Association? Okay.

Mr. Fishman? Okay. Mr. Cleveland, we\'re adding

Mr. Cleveland, who is representing the Minnesota

Intellectual Law Property Association.

Are there any other speakers that we need to

add?

\[No response.\]

Okay. Why don\'t we proceed to Mr. Aharonian.

He has asked for a half-hour, and we\'ve have been able to

accommodate that, happy to accommodate that, and we look

forward to his testimony.

Again, Mr. Aharonian, when using the overhead,

you may need to be mindful of the fact that the

transcriber may need some of that information from you

later so he can get it all in the record for us.

STATEMENT OF

GREGORY AHARONIAN

MR. AHARONIAN: My name is Greg Aharonian. I do

searches for a living.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY DICKINSON: Do you need him

on mic, by the way? Can you maybe use a mic, Mr.

Aharonian, so it can be there for the record?

MR. AHARONIAN: My name is Greg Aharonian. I do

searches for a living, mostly invalidity searches. In

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

77

fact, I think the majority of the speakers here today have

done invalidity searches against them. So I suppose I

have kind of a different point of view. And I

predominantly do work with software patents. Most of my

comments will be directed towards software.

I think the problems you\'re facing apply across

the whole electronic section of the Patent Office. By

\"electronic section,\" I mean those patents that appear in

the electronic section of the official gazette, as opposed

to the chemical and mechanical. I don\'t think the

problems are isolated to software. And, while \-- well,

anyway.

Again, most of the people I deal with, other

than my clients, are mostly lawyers. I tend to work with

patent law firms who are representing clients who have

been sued, or who might be sued, or are thinking of

acquiring patents. Occasionally, I work with corporate

counsel; but, for the most part, I\'m working directly with

the law firms.

Most of colleagues tend to be computer

scientists and software engineers around the country.

There\'s a great difference of opinion about the quality of

the patent system between the two worlds. In fact, about

a year ago, at one of the Unix guru conferences, I hosted

a panel on software patents, and I was able to get four

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

78

patent lawyers to show up in Boston to talk about it. And

about a week later, the conference organizer called me up

and asked me for the names of the panelists, and I said,

\"Why?\"

He goes, \"Well, I\'d like to call up and

apologize to all of them.\"

I go, \"How come?\"

He goes, \"Well, you know, the audience was

really hostile towards them, and, you know, I felt bad

about that. If you had listened to the conversations, I

mean, a lot of the software engineers in the audience were

extremely upset, in general, not at these guys.\"

So, I mean, a lot of these issues, you know, of

prior art searching, relevance, what\'s a software patent,

there are wide gulfs and opinions. I think one of the

problems is that, rarely, if ever, are the two groups of

people ever together anywhere. I mean, today, other than

myself, most of the people here are lawyers.

Back in the late \'60s, there was a White House

study on patents, software patents, computer patents, and

they said something that I think actually hasn\'t changed

much in the 30 years, since it was published. That the

Patent Office has problems dealing with programs, partly

because of searches, due to the large volume of the prior

art out there. And, I mean, this is back in 1966 when the

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

79

amount of prior art for software and computing wasn\'t

actually big to begin with. And, indeed, 20 years later,

at a IEEE conference, one of Silicon Valley\'s leading

software patent lawyer said much the same thing.

\"The percentages of software written today that

would satisfy the obviousness requirement is

probably in the 5 to 10 percent range. The

question of obviousness is necessarily a

case-by-case basis. Moreover, because the

Patent Office has a limited collection of prior

art, meaning the software patents which are

granted will ultimately be held to be invalid

in litigation based on prior publications,

foreign patents or commercial uses which were

not available to the Patent Office.\"

So, 20 year later, after the original, you know,

White House statement, which, at the time, was kind of the

beginning of the computing era, not much had really

changed. And, then, 10 years later, 1998, 1999, we\'re

seeing a lot of articles where lawyers are now publicly

saying what\'s apparently being said for 30 years. This is

from an article in a local publication, The Recorder,

where they happen to interview a lot of Silicon Valley

lawyers, and they pretty much said what has been said for

30 years: That the Patent Office has got a big backlog,

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

80

there\'s not enough time to do examinations, et cetera.

So, you know, from a 30-year time period, I

mean, even the lawyers, to some extent, are saying that

not much has been done to deal with this problem.

Now if someone could pass out \-- this is one of

the overheads I can pass out, since I didn\'t get a chance

to comment, make copies. Can you just \--

In 1994, I did a study of issued software

patents. I looked at about a thousand patents that were

issued in April, the spring of 1994. And I looked at a

variety of aspects of these issued patents. The black

data is the results of one of the studies. It\'s the count

of non-patent prior art references in the thousand U. S.

software patents from 1994.

I apologize. I plotted this up late last night,

so I goofed a little bit. The numbers along the X-access

are all off by one. So this column here (indicating),

where it says \"1,\" should actually be zero, and 1 on up.

So, if you use the data yourself, for anything, adjust it.

Again, this is 1994, and the results I found I

don\'t think would have surprised anyone. It really didn\'t

surprise anyone at the time. For the most part, issued

software patents were not citing much non-patent prior

art, which, as a computer scientist and a searcher, I

argue is the most relevant. Of these thousand patents,

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

81

pretty half of them cited no non-patent prior art; and the

average of this distribution was about 2, and it dropped

off fairly quickly. And, to me, you know, represents the

problem. In fact, in 1994, there were hearings the Patent

Office has here out, well, down in San Jose and Crystal

City, about this issue. I mean, it was a problem then.

What I find troubling is that, in that time

period, I\'ll argue that the Patent Office has made zero

progress in dealing with this issue.

If you look at the second column of data, the

striped data here (indicating), that is an analysis of

1,000 software patents from 1999. And, again, this is the

Greg definition of software patents. And, if you want to

meet sometime and ask me how I choose and select software

patents, I\'d be glad to explain it. And what you\'ll see

is a variety of things. One is that, for the most part,

the distribution has not changed at all. And, in fact, if

anything, one could argue that the quality of issued

software patents, as measured by the non-patent prior art,

has actually gotten slightly worse, except for a few

patents, where I\'ll argue it\'s gotten slightly better.

If you look at the data, you will actually see

that, for the most part, less non-patent prior art is

being cited, except in the extreme range, for a small

number of applicants, who were sending in lots of prior

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

82

art. In fact, one applicant, I think in 1999, sent in 400

non-patent prior art items. I would hate to have been the

examiner on that case.

So, based on this data, and, I mean, I\'m

constantly collecting more such data, I\'ll argue that the

Patent Office has made no progress in the last 5 years,

since a lot of these issues came to their attention, just

based on kind of a detailed analysis of the patents.

And one of the things that, I think one of the

other problems you\'re going to face is that, increasingly,

a lot of software patents are being held, done, outside

the Group 2700. A lot of my recent counts have shown that

the 2700 groups are only handling about two-thirds of the

software patents. In some cases, I\'m actually seeing

applicants kind of crafting their patents so they\'ll be

examined outside of the group. For example, I saw one

patent that was examined in the chemical engineering

section, and, admittedly, it dealt with a local area

network for a chemical experiment; but, if you read most

of the spec and the claims, it just was a local area

network patent. I think, had it been examined in one of

the other groups, it probably wouldn\'t have issued.

So it\'s just not a problem that faces one group

of people in the Patent Office; it\'s kind of systemic

because software increasingly is everywhere. And it kind

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

83

measured, you know, some of the lack of progress.

This is a patent that issued a couple of months

ago, in March, for pretty much something that looks up

caller ID numbers and displays it to, you know, someone at

the, you know, the recipient of a phone call. Applied for

in \'97, November \'97; issued a few months ago. It cites

no prior art at all, no patents, no non-patent prior art.

And, I mean, you know, if you\'re in a telephone business,

that would be kind of unusual, to say the least.

Now software patents have been around a long

time, no matter how you define them. For example, this is

a patent from 1972, Mobil Oil, for a geophysical signal

processing application. And, I mean, I think it\'s

legitimate to call this type of patent a software patent

because, for a very short specification, at least one of

the pages was actually a listing of FORTRANS source code.

So these things go back a long time.

This is, again, a count of U. S. software

patents going back about 30 years, or so, again, based on,

you know, how I classify patents. And it shows a couple

of interesting things. The black columns are the U. S.

software patents by year. Throughout the \'70s, there

weren\'t too many; at most, a couple hundred. In the \'80s,

it started ramping up so that, by the end of the \'80s, you

were up to four of five hundred software patents a year.

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

84

And it\'s only in the \'90s have they taken off. I estimate

that the last year about 17,500 software patents issued;

this year, it will be about 22,000. And I think it\'s

actually looking like it\'s starting to plateau; so that,

for the foreseeable future, you\'re going to see upwards of

about 20,000 software patents issuing a year.

Now the interesting thing, you know, as a

measure of the kind of quality problem the Patent Office

faces \-- which, I can admit, I\'m somewhat sympathetic \--

is that 1998, 1999, about 40,000 software patents are

going to issue. In \'92 and \'93, about 4,000 software

patents have issued. So that, in a 6-year period, the

output has increased tenfold. And it\'s certainly true

that the Patent Office resources, for examining these

patents, haven\'t increased in parallel. So, I mean, one

could just conclude, a priori, that there\'s going to be

some quality suffering, because their issuing more with

less resources per application. And certainly the data I

presented earlier is somewhat indicative of that.

This is the data I presented earlier, which I

just handed out to you. And, you know, again, I look at

this as, I suppose, as a computer scientist. I have a

degree in computer science. For many years, I worked in

the defense industry designing software. And for the last

4 or 5 years, I\'ve been invalidity studies on software

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

85

patents.

The way I work is quite comfortable for me and

the lawyers. When I\'m asked to invalidate a patent, I\'ll

agree with the lawyer ahead of time on a fixed fee of how

much I want to charge to do the search, and it varies

anywhere from \$2,000 and \$10,000. Once I agree on the

fixed fee, they\'re free to bug me as much as they want

until they get a sufficient amount of art to make them

happy in preparing the invalidity opinion. Oftentimes,I

don\'t know what type of art they\'re looking for, what

opinion they\'re crafting. All I know is that they keep on

calling me up, you know, and pestering me, as long as they

want, until they get what they need to prepare a good

argument.

Now I don\'t mind this type of arrangement,

because, usually, within two or three passes, I can find

enough prior art. Invariably, it\'s non-patent prior art.

I\'d say 90 percent of the prior art that they use to make

their arguments is non-patent art. And, within two or

three passes of searching, they\'re happy, in the sense

that they stop calling me and I get to bill them \-- which

makes me happy.

So, I will argue that the non-patent art is

important because it proves useful. And, certainly, it\'s

not that hard to find it in many cases. This is the study

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

86

of somebody \-- I took a leave a few years ago, where all I

did was just count the lengths of bibliographies in IEEE

Journal articles. And a large number of IEEE publications

are relevant to software, so I think their study is

relevant to patent issues.

What they found is what you expect. That over

the years, the length of bibliographies have increased,

for the simple reason that the cumulative work of computer

knowledge has gotten bigger so there\'s more potential

stuff for someone writing an article to cite. And you

extrapolate this data out to 1999, where we are right now,

I think the average length of, you know, a substantial

IEEE article\'s bibliography is about three dozen items.

And I ask you: If people writing articles can find lots

of non-patent art in the form of the bibliographies, why

do they suddenly lose this ability when they file for

patents? Sometimes you can see the overlap where you can

find papers written by an inventor, and patents in which

the inventor was a participant in the prior art that was

in his bibliography does not appear in a patent.

Now, admittedly, bibliographies are somewhat

different in nature in terms of the relevance of the

articles. We usually got rid of two-thirds of the

articles in the bibliography so that your bound to see a

dozen, or so, items in a bibliography. That amount of art

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

87

is still much greater than the basic one or two articles

cited on average in the past.

So, I\'ve heard comments repeatedly here, and

other forums, that finding art is an undue chore on

applicants. I\'ll disagree because they prove themselves

everyday.

Now some other comments that you\'ll hear is that

applicants in general like to do searching. For that,

I\'ll disagree: (a) on the data; and (b) on the

applicants. The bulk of software patents go to large

companies \-- none of whom are here, for the most part.

This is an analysis of 3,000 software patents

issued in 1998, I think the fall of \'98. And pretty much

about half of the issued software patents go to 50 large

companies, your IBMs, your Motorolas, your Fujitsu, your

Microsoft, your Suns, and everyone else. A lot of the

small applicants, the small entities, and the like, who

tend to probably do more searching, are not on these

lists. They\'re not getting many patents, (a) because they

cannot afford to; and (b) it wouldn\'t make much sense. So

to some extent, software patenting is being driven by

large companies, who, I\'ll argue, have a interest in

preferring quantity over quality.

So I\'ll question, sometimes, the relevance of

surveys you do of your customers, because they have, a lot

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

88

of them have, a different need of the patent system than

others do. And they also have different needs than the

software industry, in general, many of whom don\'t apply

for patents. I think a lot of the cases I do invalidity

studies for are companies who, for the most part, aren\'t

big patentors. They might have one or two, but they

mostly tend to get their market share either by innovation

and marketing, and not so much on patenting. They would

not appear on your studies, your surveys; and, yet, they

are victims of the process.

Now sometimes \--

ASSISTANT SECRETARY DICKINSON: This is a time

check, Mr. Aharonian. You\'re about half-way through.

MR. AHARONIAN: Okay. Great. That\'s good

timing.

Now some of the problems of searching have

little to do actually with searching. Just some of the

things that go on in the Patent Office itself. This is a

patent that issued early last year. One of my clients

actually sent it to me complaining about it. Hopefully,

the problem that this patent illustrates has been

resolved; but, at the time, I got a chuckle out of it.

This is a patent issued to Bloch Financial.

It\'s part of H&R Bloch, the big tax guys. And it\'s a

system for online financial services using distributed

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

89

objects. And, for the most part, doesn\'t cite much art at

all, a couple patents, couple journal articles. And what

struck me, what struck the lawyer I was dealing with and

myself, was quite funny. It was the kind of comment the

examiner made in the search notes. And this is kind of

the typical search report I see listed in the file

wrappers, and they aren\'t overly thrilling to me. Well, I

mean, I love this type of stuff because it\'s stuff for me

to boast.

At one point, he made a comment, and this about

2 years ago, so hopefully it\'s been fixed. But his

comment was that, at one point, he did a little internet

search on a couple of the keywords in the patent. And

then he has this comment, which goes: \"The system crashes

repeatedly, time up long ago, stopped.\" It\'s not

something that I like to see in file wrappers, and,

admittedly, I don\'t see too often. But some of the search

problems I see are just due to the constrained resources

examiners have.

The other big complaint I hear from examiners \--

and examiners always send me their little pet peeves \-- is

one that I get many times from the examiners, who

sometimes take some of my criticism as criticisms of them,

which I try not to do because I realize the difficult

conditions they work under. And, you know, the complaint

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

90

is that they\'re basically pressured under the two-point

system at the second offer action to either issue

something or kind of let it go. But they just don\'t have

too much resources to continue on. And they, a lot of

them, feel that the applicants and their lawyers take

advantage of the fact that they\'re under these constraints

and, you know, kind of play little games in terms of claim

drafting to get what they want. And the examiners don\'t

like it because they\'re forced to do things that they\'d

just really rather not to. I mean, I think a lot of the

examiners do try to issue the best patents possible. But

I really think that one of the big problems that

has to be studies is the point system. Admittedly,

they\'re not too many great alternatives. But, even if

they\'re aren\'t, I think it\'s worth examining that all over

again. Because I hear a lot of complaints, both by

lawyers and by examiners.

Now, actually, I also publish a newsletter.

And, on Friday, I actually sent out a little survey asking

a few questions. I actually got a fair number of

responses. I think, a few of them, you guys will find

quite interesting.

One of the questions I asked is: Should the

Patent Office create a corps of searches, with statutory

authority, freeing examiners to focus on applications and

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

91

analysis? Yes, No.

I got about 40 respondents, mostly lawyers and

engineerers. And, actually, I was surprised that 80

percent of them wanted to see a separate search corps.

Another question I asked was \-- and this is how

I worded the questions: How much money is a reasonable

amount to have spent, either by the Patent Office, the

applicant, or the Government \-- and I\'ll explain that

question later \-- for decent patentability search for an

electronic patent applicant?

Again, I got about 40 responses there. About a

quarter of them were less than a thousand dollars,

something comparable to their application fee. About half

were in the one thousand to two thousand dollar range, and

about a quarter of them were greater than \$2,000. Some

ranged up to \$10,000. So that, you know, if you kind of

average out all the answers, one could say maybe a fee of

\$1,500 would be a reasonable amount to have spent on a

decent search. Again, \"reasonable, decent\" would have to

be defined somehow, but I think it could be. And,

certainly, we have a vast majority of applicants spending

between \$10,000 and \$20,000 to get a patent issued.

Asking them to spend 10 percent more, or 10 percent of

that, on searching to some extent (a) I don\'t think would

be unreasonable; and (b) would, you know, certainly fall

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

92

within the distribution of people\'s preferences.

The final question was, you know, one of my pet

peeves. And, again, most of the people on my list tend to

be out here and victims of the big companies, so they all

kind of vented for a couple of minutes. But one of the

lawyers I do a lot of work for is always good for a good

quote. The question I asked was: Do established

companies prefer quality over quantity as a basis for

their patent strategy? He writes, emphatically:

\"Quantity. This is true for everyone, not just

established companies. It\'s the Sadam Hussein

of the software patent world has WMDs \--

weapons of mass destruction, a/k/a software

patents \-- to dump on everyone else as many as

they can.\"

It\'s a point I hear a lot. Everyone knows that

the larger software patent application types, like the

IBMs and Microsofts, for the most part, don\'t do any

searching. That puts everyone else in a weird position.

They can either fight for reform of the system, which is a

long and tedious thing; or, in the short term, they can

just do the same thing themselves: file lots of

applications. And, in the past few years, I\'ve seen that

happening. One of my earliest slides has Microsoft as

like the No. 2 software patentee, and that\'s a very recent

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

93

phenomenon. Throughout much of the \'80s and early \'90s,

Microsoft was not a patentee. It really didn\'t need it

for its success. In fact, most of the companies in the

Valley that are considered software companies rose to

their market positions without reliance on patents, for

the most part. It\'s only been in recent years that a lot

of these controversies have arisen. And a lot of them, as

they begin to make substantial amount of profits, have

been approached by some of the larger companies, with

large portfolios, and have decided that, well, the best

way to fight them is to join them. Which, you know, is a

rational business decision, but it just leads to more

abuses of the system.

So what\'s my advice? Well, you\'re not going to

like most of it; but no one seems to like what I say

anyway, so, what the hell.

One is that I think there is a need for a

shakeup of PTO management in some of these groups. That

said, I strongly believe, in the last 5 years, the Patent

Office has made zero progress improving the quality of

patents. And that the various little fixes tried over the

years have not proven very effectual. And I don\'t think

any new fixes in their term will have much more of an

effect. Things are being done where no measurement,

before and after, of what\'s happened. It\'s a standard

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

94

business practice. I find that, I find that bad. I don\'t

mind people doing experiments and failing. I mean, that\'s

what science and engineering is all about. But to do an

experiment and not measure whether or not you succeeded or

failed I think is just a disservice to the public.

So until there are some shakeup in the

management of the Patent Office, it doesn\'t matter what

anyone says.

I think Rule 56 should be toughened. I think

the requirement for patent applicants are way too low. I

think some of the bigger companies are so abusive of the

process that you should unleash your OED Office, even if

they fail in their pursuit, just to crack down on a few of

them.

I find it incomprehensible that large companies

that brag about how the fact that their search engine and

database tools are the best on the planet, and they\'re

creating the biggest libraries on the planet, when they

come to their patent application, suddenly they can\'t

find, you know, even their own papers.

And the third major suggestion would be to

outsource the searching, or to, as I mentioned earlier,

have statutorily PTO type searches in house.

Those are three big things. I\'m not sure you\'ll

get either of them, any of them, done; but my personal

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

95

opinion is that they would do a lot to improve this thing.

Then, there\'s some minor things that I don\'t

think would have much of an effect, but I wouldn\'t mind

seeing done anyways.

I have problems with the two-point system. I

know that\'s a big economics question for the Patent

Office, but I just see a lot of problems with it. I think

you need better statistical analysis. I think you need

any statistical analysis, but certainly the type of

studies that I do in my part time. I know it would be

quite easy for PTO people to do because they have all this

data on their computers already. It\'s just a matter of

writing SPSS batch files, or something, and grinding out

data.

One of the other things is that I think the way

you even handle references to non-patent prior art is poor

inside the Patent Office. For example, one complaint I

hear about my data, of counts of non-patent prior art, is

that you\'re not including \-- because I only count what

appears on the front page of the patent. A lot of

complaints I hear from some people, not too many, is that

there\'s prior art that\'s cited in the file wrapper that

doesn\'t make it to the front page. Why not? I want to

see that data there. It\'s important to everyone involved.

Yet, in some cases, not many cases, I don\'t think it

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

96

throws off my statistics that much. It doesn\'t make it

there.

The other thing is that, if you look at the

references on the front page, the non-patent references,

there is no systematic way of publishing the bibliographic

item. There are all sorts of standards for doing so, at

least half-dozen products out there. Certainly, the

American Library Association, and others, have standard

ways of listing bibliography items. A lot of times, I\'ll

see a reference like, IEEE, 1995, page 10, as a front-page

reference on a patent. Now, certainly, if I get the file

wrapper, I can find out what paper they\'re actually

talking about. But, to me, it indicates kind of a lack of

concern, for the non-patent aspects of it, that they allow

these references to be kind of treated so cavalierly.

And, again, I say that more just because it would make my

life easier, and it\'s not a big thing. But it\'s sometimes

all these little things that do add up. But, in the end,

most of these suggestions are. I don\'t think you could

pull off one and it wouldn\'t have much of an effect.

I mean, what it comes down to is spending money.

Whatever you do is going to cost money, and it\'s going to

cost nontrivial amounts of money. Certainly, as I said

before, in era where, in a time when people are spending

\$10,000/\$20,000 to get the patent, I don\'t think it\'s

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

97

undue to have them spend some amounts somehow, or someone

spend it somewhere. I mean, the way I look at it, there

are three things you can do, and they\'re going to cost, I

think, on the average of about a thousand dollars per

application \-- which, I think, as I said, is 10 percent,

or so, of what they\'re spending already, and is certainly

more like something I charge, which is what I basically

charge.

I think things that you could do are: (a),

somehow require applicants to do it. Admittedly, I think

it\'s going to be hard to come up with some sort of rules

to specify what they do, how they do it. I mean, you

know, the lawyers do make some valid concerns about doing

that.

The second would be to have the Patent Office

itself somehow spend a thousand dollars more per patent

application. Maybe raising fees, application fees,

maintenance fees, whatever.

The third would be that, considering that you\'re

handling about 30,000, or so, patent applications a year,

this thousand-dollar-per-application fee comes out, you

know, to \$30 million a year, which is a substantial amount

of money. And, if you do it for the whole electronic

section, which, I think, would be welcome idea. You know,

you\'re talking probably \$100 million a year. And, over a

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

98

5-year period, you\'re talking about even more amounts of

money, to the extent that you certainly have this large

amount of money being spent somehow.

The third idea would be to have someone like the

U. S. Government fund the equivalent to Medline for the

computing world. It would take them between \$50 million

and \$100 million to do so, because that\'s about how much

is spent to date over the decades on Medline. Certainly,

computing literature is important to the country as the

medical literature is. I mean, there\'s a specific reason

why they do Medline because health is an extreme concern

to the country. Well, given that we\'re the information

economy, our computing resources are just as important.

Certainly, the government wastes a lot more on this type

of stuff every year: the Defense Department; Commerce

Department, your father agency; Energy Department. The

monies are there.

But, to me, what sort of comes down to, you\'re

talking large amounts of money somehow, either distributed

across the applicants, across Patent Office budgets,

across the U. S. Government budget. Frankly, I always

thought it was kind of weird that the most important, one

of the most important parts of our technology process, the

patenting part, actually has to be self-sufficient. I

mean, I always thought that was kind of crazy. I don\'t

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

99

think there\'s anything wrong with having the government

throw a few bucks towards the Patent Office.

To me, that\'s sort of what it comes down to:

the money issue. And, you know, it\'s going to have to

come out of somewhere, and I think that\'s where you\'re

going run into more resistance because, you know, people

just don\'t want to pay.

And these two last slides, just to make this

real quick \-- do I have time for two more?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY DICKINSON: If they\'re

quick.

MR. AHARONIAN: Ah, forget it, then. They\'re

minor issues. I\'ll save them for some other time. That\'s

all I got to say.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY DICKINSON: Thank you, Mr.

Aharonian. Are there questions from the panel? Mr.

Godici.

MR. GODICI: Thanks for being here. Appreciate

it. Thanks for being here and being on the record.

I wanted to ask you, you talked about the fact

that you are a searcher, and many times have found prior

art that we, at the PTO, or the applicant, hasn\'t

submitted in the prosecution. I was wondering if you

could share with us, you know, some of the sources of that

prior art that you use.

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

100

MR. AHARONIAN: Well, I mean, yes and no,

because, obviously, some of it is trade secrets. But, I

mean, part of it \-- I mean, you know, the three main

sources that I always use, I think, I don\'t use the

internet much. Internet gives me a headache. It\'s a pain

in the \-- it\'s just a pain to go through the internet, f

for a variety of reasons, some of which the lawyers have

cited, that the citation aspects of anything on the

internet is often hard to verify. In general, there\'s

just a lot of crap out there.

The biggest sources where you\'re failing the

most, you\'re not going to find everything. Certainly,

I\'ve accessed things that I know no one else has access

to, sources that aren\'t abstracted on any database

anywhere. These tend to be older documents. But if you

just dealt with dealing with the main engineering

societies around the planet, the IEEE, the ACM, Spy, I

mean there are half a dozen. Mainly of the applicants

belong to these societies. That, in itself, would

drastically improve the quality.

It\'s not so much the sources. I mean, people

always ask me the sources, and, you know, I tend to be

reticent about it; but, half the time, I really don\'t care

because it\'s not the source. It\'s the logistics of

dealing with it.

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

101

Anyone can, you know, do what I do. I hang out

in libraries all day long. I mean, there\'s nothing

brillant about that solution. You know, that\'s what I do.

People pay me to hang out in libraries. So it\'s not that

I have a really unique access to anything. Admittedly, I

have a lot of experience. I mean, I\'ve been hanging out

in libraries for 20 years. I mean, I could draw you floor

plans for most of the university libraries around the

country. Certainly that gives me a little edge. I can

walk into a place.

The question is logistics both as an individual

searcher, having to deal with multiple searches at the

same time, and I suppose, you know, whoever is head of

searching in the Patent Office, I mean, your focusing on

the wrong issues. It\'s not sources and databases, and

stuff like that. You know, I mean, look! Most online

databases in the computer world are useless. Software

abstracts are, you know, horribly written. You know, the

abstract will start off one way, and the guy, when he

writes the article, will start going off in a different

tangent. Half the time, you don\'t know what\'s in the

article based on the abstract, if you\'re kind of naively

doing all this stuff.

So, I mean, the sources is not the problem; it\'s

the logistics of how you deal with \-- I mean, my main

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

102

worry is if I can find a parking space at Stanford

conveniently in the afternoon. I mean, it\'s a bigger

worry than, you know, whatever the damn application

technology is. It\'s little things like that. Whatever

you do on a large scale at the Patent Office, you\'re

probably not going to be source and technology; it\'s going

to be logistics of dealing with tons of documents and tons

of odd-ball sources, stuff like that. So, I mean, that\'s

your bigger problem. A lot of it is just logistics. But,

you know, as a first step, just dealing with the main

obvious sources of IEEE, ACM, stuff like that.

I mean, you know, go up to Gaithersberg, NBS.

I mean, you know, walk around there. They\'re a pretty

decent library. They\'re a sister agency. You know, steal

it. You know, break in one night and steal all their

stuff. You know, that\'d be a big help.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY DICKINSON: Any other

questions? Mr. Godici.

MR. GODICI: You mentioned the fact that you

thought some management structural change might, might be

one of the solutions. And you stated that we weren\'t

measuring our progress, or our programs, that we attempted

to implement. Could you give us a little further

explanation of what you meant by that?

MR. AHARONIAN: Well, again, I mean, in a sense

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

103

\-- what\'s the saying, if you have a hammer, everything

looks like a nail? I spend all my time with non-patent

prior arts, so, to me, I look at everything from that

point of view. That one chart I put up earlier, comparing

1994 to 1999 citations for non-patent prior art, for

issued patents, it has not changed in 5 years. And in

that time, you\'ve done a lot of things. You hired

computer scientists, you\'ve brought in electronic

databases. There are a whole bunch of little gimmicks:

set up the EIC, et cetera, et cetera. I track each one of

them, and I\'m not saying any, you know, anything at the

output end in terms of change and what I think is the most

important indicator of quality.

Who to blame? I mean, I have no idea. I mean,

to send someone like me to the Patent Office is somewhat

of a black box. You know, stuff comes in, stuff comes

out; but, you know, what goes on in the middle? But I

don\'t see \-- I mean, I look at all this as, you know \-- is

anything going to do, going to decrease the amount of

business I have? That\'s all I really care about. And I

don\'t see anything you\'re doing, doing that. So, as a

businessman, I\'m happy; but, I suppose, as a citizen, I\'m

concerned. I just don\'t see any change, period.

I hear comments from lawyers that some of the

cites that applicants, that the examiners are giving them

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

104

are better. I\'ve seen some of that myself. But, I mean,

I\'m looking at things in the aggregate. I mean, I look at

thousands and thousands of patents when I make some of

these assessments. At that level, a lot of that stuff

gets washed out and there\'s really no change. So, I\'m not

sure what to say.

MR. KUNIN: Once again, I\'d like to also thank

you for testifying today.

Mr. Aharonian, you\'ve indicated that, as a

concerned citizen, as well as a businessman, you question

some of the quality of patents, and you\'ve put up some

examples in your viewgraphs. Have you, as a concerned

citizen in these situations, ever filed a third-party

requested reexam, or entered any documents into patent

files, as permitted under Section 301 of the law?

MR. AHARONIAN: Actually, I\'ve always thought

about coming up with a series of patent stories for my

newsletter. Well, actually, formally filed a reexam, just

a, you know, to show everyone what it\'s like and, you

know, something new to do. But the concerns I have with

doing stuff like that are much the concerns of, I think,

why a lot of people want reform of the third-party reexam,

and why they\'re, you know, kind of unhappy with the

current proposed reform. I just don\'t trust the Patent

Office with it, you know. I\'d rather save it for, you

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

105

know, if someone actually wants to go after some of the

patents, and actually didn\'t use a lot of sample patents

that show examples of art. But, for the most part, you

know, if it does become important to someone at some point

in the future, I\'d rather have them have the ability to

use it themselves in court. A lot of people are just

still wary of the reexam, as it is right now. And, you

know, I suppose that\'s the concerned citizen.

As a businessman, you know, I sell this stuff.

You know, so, I have no real, you know, civic duty, per

se. Again, it\'s onesy-twosy stuff. I mean, you\'re

problem is logistics. You\'re dealing with tens of

thousands of stuff a year. You know, I can send in stuff

for a handful every now and then, just for the hell of

it; but it\'s not going to make much of a difference. It\'s

only in the aggregate that it would be, you know,

meaningful. I mean, I just don\'t have the time or

resources to do it myself. So, you know \...

MR. WALSH: Mr. Aharonian, you mentioned that

some patents that you would consider electronic patents

issued out of other tech centers, such as chemical, for

example. Where claims deal with the dynamic process,

where you have chemical events and electronic events going

on, what are your suggestions on how we should approach

those patents, assuming that those types of processes

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

106

would increase, you\'d probably see increased filings?

MR. AHARONIAN: Well, those are tricky ones. In

fact, I think your problem is going to get a lot worse in

the future, and in an interesting sense. I mean, as me,

just as a technologist, and \...

This is a paper from an article in Science

Magazine. If you just look at the main part of it here,

it just looks like some little algorithm someone might

want to patent. Nothing really fancy about it, and

certainly I\'ve seen single-processing algorithms less

complicated than this thing.

This paper is actually from an article on a gene

sequence and how it\'s handled in the cell. The biotech

people, even at the genetic level, are starting to do

stuff that looks about as computational as it\'s going to

get. In fact, I think that your office is currently

handling a few DNA computer patents, which is the ultimate

blur, using DNA sequences in a purely biotech-chemical

thing to do computational calculations. Who do you have

examine that? Which is what I think you\'re asking. And

you either have one or two choices: (a) you go out and

hire someone who is an expert in some of these areas, has

dual degrees in computers and biotech, of something; or

\(b\) \-- and I think (a) is going to be hard to find people

like that; and (b) if you do find them, you can\'t offer

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

107

them enough stock options \-- you can\'t offer them any

stock options and everyone else is.

The other thing is, you know, I think from what

I heard John Dahl once say at a conference: You guys just

take a chem guy and computer guy, and put them in a room

and have them work together. You know, assuming they get

along, they can probably, you know, bring their dual

expertise to the problem; and, hopefully, that will be

enough to deal with it. But I think, in the end, you\'re

always be kind of a victim of the fact that the people

sending in this stuff are the experts themselves, so that

they\'re going to be some understanding of the patent

application that the dual team might miss. But I think

your dual team approach is the best way to go. Just find

two good people, one in each group, and have them work

together.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY DICKINSON: Any other

questions?

\[No response.\]

I have one. Mr. Aharonian, you indicated that

you thought we should toughen Rule 56. Could you

elaborate on that? What specifics would you suggest for

toughening the rule?

MR. AHARONIAN: Yes, sure. Have everyone hire

me. But beyond that, I mean, I have to admit I\'m somewhat

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

108

sympathetic.

For example, I told you that the average length

of a IEEE bibliography is 36 items, as we speak right now.

Say two-thirds of that are, you know, people citing their

own papers just to stuff the bibliography. Well, maybe

only about a dozen of the citations are actually good

meaty ones. Now this is across tens of thousands of IEEE

papers. So I might argue, a priori, that asking everyone

to send in good, ten good, non-patent prior art items is

one way of toughening Rule 56. Your patents, I mean, for

the most part, I have no problem with handling prior

patents. Examiners do a great job because of all the

resources they have. So, I mean, this is a non-patent

issue.

The problem is that it comes down to the word,

\"good,\" \"decent,\" \"relevant,\" you know, what all the

lawyers are objecting to. And, I mean, I\'ve had lawyers

seriously argue with me: Greg, look! Zero is the only

unambiguous, fair number to request of people, because

anything else involves some value judgment, and who makes

that judgment, the Patent Office, the examiner? It\'s

actually a very tricky issue. So I\'m not sure what you do

there.

I mean, all I can say is that I know that such a

solution can exist. Because, for a moderate fee, I, and a

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

109

few other people I know in this business, offer people

good search. I typically find about 15 good prior

patents, and 15 good prior journal articles. And I would

have no problem myself arguing that that should be the

minimum; other people will.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY DICKINSON: Can I ask you

that question, then? One of our other questions that we

posed for the hearing today was to require applicants to

do a search. Would you support that, or not?

MR. AHARONIAN: Yeah. I mean, to that, I will

disagree with the lawyers. Like I said, you\'re spending

10 to 20 grand to get a patent application. Would it kill

you to go to one of your engineers in the company, tell

him to get in his car, drive over to the library for a

couple of hours, look up some stuff? I mean, you know,

you can do a decent search without undue burden on the

applicant. Especially in this day and era, I find it hard

to be sympathetic with all the other comments.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY DICKINSON: Any other

questions?

\[No response.\]

Thank you very much. We appreciate it.

The next witness is Mr. Ritter, Dale Ritter, who

is an independent inventor.

//

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

110

STATEMENT OF

DALE RITTER

INDEPENDENT INVENTOR

MR. RITTER: I should let you know I\'m deaf, and

I\'ll try my best. If you don\'t understand me, stop me.

Okay?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY DICKINSON: Can you speak a

little louder, get closer to the mic.

MR. RITTER: I am an independent inventor.

That\'s different from most of you people here. I\'m not a

lawyer.

I\'ve done a lot of patent search, and

everything, and I\'ve submitted a patent application. I

consider that a very important invention, but I am biased.

It\'s a contribution to the American paper, computer, and

print environment. There is one prior art, and that one

is not patented, and it was like from 100 years ago. And

if the art that went into that prior art is long lost.

It\'s almost completely lost. But there is some literature

out there on that art. So I did the patent search, and

everything, and I found nothing. I\'ve gone to different

libraries, spent a lot of time.

So, anyway, to make a long story short, my

patent application was rejected four times, the fourth

time final. The first rejection, second rejection, were

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

111

on different grounds, and the third a different ground.

But the examiner did not take the prior art as a ground

for rejection until the third rejection, and I feel today

that was very unfair. So I made a phone call, in the

beginning, to the examiner before I did my own

prosecution, and she said, \"Well, you don\'t need to do

anything, you know, it\'s not patentable.\"

I said, \"Oh, yes, it is.\" I\'m a mathematician.

Many things in mathematics you cannot patent. I

understand that, clearly. But if mathematics is used as a

process to make something work better so it becomes

functional and, you know, utility, it\'s patentable, you

know. But in my argument with the examiner, and in my own

prosecution \-- am I talking loud enough? But in my own

prosecution, I won, though the examiner reversed her

decision. The first rejection, second rejection was

reversed. But they keep jumping to another ground for

rejection, and the third time, it was referring to a prior

art that I brought up in my own original application.

So that was an awful round, because I\'m not a

lawyer. I\'m not used to writing and arguing, and all

that, you know. But I did it all by myself anyway.

You know, the first and third rejection, I

didn\'t respond within the time given, the three months. I

went into overtime, fourth, fifth, sixth month to respond,

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

112

all because I was so emotional, and no support. I mean,

lawyers, or others, maybe friends, or anybody who can

support me. I had no support. And that many times, I

almost lost out by almost doing nothing, you know. If I

don\'t do anything, then I lose and the application becomes

abandoned and I lose. But I know my invention. So,

anyway, I would try to stick with the prior art issues for

here.

In the third rejection, the examiner told me,

she raised the question: Is my invention, or no, the

prior art, or, I mean either way, my prior art or my

invention an anticipation of the other? I said, well,

look! I don\'t really know what that means. I know what

\"anticipation\" means, but not in legal terms. I said,

well, yeah, it can be, it can be an anticipation. But

that was a bad mistake I made. So, boom! They made the

rejection final.

After that, no; I didn\'t respond to the final

rejection because I was so overwhelmed. Then, through

time, I was thinking about it. Well, what\'s the

difference between anticipation and nonobviousness? So I

was thinking more about nonobviousness. My invention is

not obvious. The prior art there is there. It\'s 50

percent of the rule. But nobody thought about adapting it

for American use to make something, to make our computer

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

113

society, the printing, everything, optimum. I mean, we\'re

still far from it. If I could introduce my invention,

it\'s going to revolutionize that whole industry.

But here I am. I have no money. I can\'t afford

attorneys to help me and prosecute in the courts against

the examiners. So that\'s the way the situation is. I

would still not give up on it. I need money, you know,

and fight on that point. The anticipation is not

necessarily an appropriate issue of nonobviousness. If

there\'s something that exists there, it takes ingenuity,

maybe if it seems so simple. Make a change, you invent

the change that\'s going to impact the world, it\'s got to

be done. Nobody thought about it.

My own invention, I estimate it\'s about 35 years

overdue. You know, we had copy machines back in the \'60s,

and computers, you know, back in the \'60s. My invention

could be used back then. Today, 35 years later, we still

don\'t have it. But I have the invention. I refuse to

disclose it until I get the patent. So there\'s some

hangups between me and the examiner. And I feel it\'s very

unfair, and what can I do?

That\'s my testimony as far as the prior art

goes. I\'m sorry I\'m not very organized on that, but I

learned about this hearing about last Wednesday. I didn\'t

have time to really prepare for this hearing. But if I

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

114

had one extra month to submit a paper, I will do that. I

would read the law books and work on this point, because

it is important to revival of my own invention.

That\'s it for now, and I will submit papers in

the next month. Do you have any questions?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY DICKINSON: Thank you, Mr.

Ritter.

Are there any questions from the panel?

\[No response.\]

Thank you. We\'ll certainly take both your oral

testimony and your written testimony under advisement. I

want to thank you for being here today. I think you also

highlight the challenges that independent inventors face

with our Office and with the system. I know we\'re working

on a number of things now to help address those concerns.

So I appreciate your bringing them to our attention today,

and please know that we\'ll continue to work to do our best

to help you and all independent inventors.

Thank you very much.

MR. RITTER: Thank you very much. But I will

tell you, you know, last September I was here at the

inventors conference by the PTO. Don Kelly was there, and

I shared with him. He told me that the PTO has considered

having an ombudsman. I said to him: Get on with it. I

need an ombudsman. I don\'t have a money for lawyers, and

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

115

all that, you know. And I think I have a complaint to

make, and I should learn about reexamination, you know.

Is that something for me to look into? You know, this guy

here, he just doesn\'t trust in the Patent Office. I feel

the same way. I\'m losing trust in the Patent Office

because, hey, the invention is mine, and who is to tell me

no, you cannot implement your invention. You know, that\'s

what it all boils down to.

So, thank you, for giving me the time to speak.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY DICKINSON: Thank you, Mr.

Ritter, for sharing that with us. We appreciate it.

Next on our list is Mr. Sabath, who I understand

is here, from the Silicon Valley Intellectual Property Law

Association. I have the additional speakers left today,

Mr. Sherm Fishman, who I know is in the audience. Yes?

David Cleveland, and now John Schipper. Is that right,

Mr. Schipper from Sabath and Schipper. Is that right?

We will try to keep going straight on through.

That\'s probably about a little over an hour\'s worth of

testimony today. I think that would probably be, at this

point, preferable to breaking unless \-- do we have

additional speakers who wish to testify?

\[No response.\]

All right. Thank you very much.

//

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

116

STATEMENT OF

ROBERT SABATH, ESQ.

SILICON VALLEY INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY LAW ASSOCIATION

MR. SABATH: I would welcome you to Silicon

Valley, but you\'ve come out here so often that you\'re so

familiar with this area, and with the SCI3 group, and just

generally.

I didn\'t bring any prepared remarks. I found

that, because of your presence out here in Silicon Valley

so often, and you\'ve been so responsive to the oral

comments in the past, severe documentation isn\'t really

necessary.

I liked some of the questions that I\'ve heard

here already. You\'ve asked: How do you find prior art?

Well, it depends, of course. In my case, it\'s not really

a trade secret. You can find prior art all over the

place, but you have to intend to go look for it. I think

that goes both ways, with respect to patent attorneys, the

applicant, and also the examiners.

In the many years I\'ve been practicing as a

patent attorney, I started with General Electric\'s

training operation, at 2001 Jeff Davis, before they closed

it down. I used to spend many hours in the Patent Office

files.

One of the things that I\'ve found that was just

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

117

tremendous was the personal contact with the examiners. I

found that what the examiners do themselves, in terms of

establishing informal subclassifications and going out

into the book stores of the local community, it\'s really

an awesome contribution. I think there\'s quite a lot that

the agency can do, top down, to help the examiners along,

and to help all of us along. I think that\'s one of the

emphases. But there\'s quite a lot that the examiners

themselves, from the bottom up, can do if they\'re truly

enabled.

Well, let\'s pretend, for example, that the

Patent Office had examiners out here. What would an

examiner, for example, in the software arts, do to find

prior art?

There\'s a joke that, if you want some software

here in Silicon Valley, what you do is, is you go to the

Tide House, because you can get just about any software

you want from the guys sitting across from you, drinking a

beer. I mean, there\'s an informality out here. There\'s so

much access to software, to prior art, to books. A lot

of times, you depend on the World Wide Web. Like I was

writing an application dealing with MP-3, a compression of

music. I went on the web and found quite a lot. I went

out looking at Stacey\'s Bookstore, and, for a few months,

they\'ve had a book on MP-3 on order. Sooner or later,

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

118

that prior art is going to show up.

I think there\'d be nothing nicer than to

actually have some examiners out here, whether they\'re

just temporarily here at SCI3, to go with an examiner to

Stacey\'s Bookstore, to the Computer Literacy Bookstore,

and to have that one-on-one contact that I had when I was

searching in the Patent Office. I mean, there\'s a public

search room there, but there\'s prior art tucked away that

the individual examiners know. It\'s just fabulous what an

individual, with the technical background that the

examiners have, can do when given a little bit of free

reign.

So, from the perspective of the Silicon Valley

intellectual property community, I think anything that the

Patent Office does to give examiners sabbaticals, or

specific assignments to come out here \-- perhaps the

Patent Office could help SCI3 develop it\'s own literature

collections in certain areas, in the software area.

Perhaps, by sending out some examiners for a short term \--

I know, later on, John Schipper is probably going to

propose some volunteering efforts that we, and the local

community, would be delighted to make ad hoc suggestions

and to develop programs with you, at the management level,

or with the individual examiners you might choose to send

out. So there\'s just a lot we can do informally just to

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

119

go forward.

Now working in house at different companies, a

lot of times, big companies like to figure out what things

they have patented. They lose track of their own

portfolios a lot of times. One of the first things that

they do is use keywords to identify the product areas, the

technology areas, that their patent portfolio falls into.

And I think one of the first things an examiner does, if

he does an electronic search, he starts looking up

keywords. One thing the Patent Office has never really

done is require applicants to suggest keywords to help

along with the searches. I mean, in the United States, we

have one classification system. There\'s the international

classification system. I think prior art begins with

indexes, categories, classifications. And as a federal

agency, you have a lot of power to define new trends in

that area.

So, I think Mr. Aharonian is 100 percent is

rightt on in terms of there\'s a lot of art out there, and

he\'s been pushing in the right direction. But I found

there\'s already a lot of prior art right there in the

federal agencies, some of it in the Patent Office. Some

examples of federal agencies that are truly super in terms

of having a lot of technology, some of which gets out and

some of which stays inside, NASA, for example, Department

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

120

of Energy. I think that, by doing some interagency work,

I think a lot could be learned.

One of the things that might be learned from

some of the other federal agencies is the fact that these

agencies have facilities out here in Silicon Valley. I

think one reason NASA is so strong out here is because

there\'s a lot of \-- aside from the wind tunnels and the

hardware site \-- because or, perhaps, Lockheed\'s strong

presence out here. But, right now, NASA is landlord.

Moffit used to be a Naval Air Station. There\'s facilities

out there that, perhaps, NASA, as a landlord, could

provide some facilities and some space. But I think this

all has to start slowly. But I think, if the examiners

were empowered and encouraged \-- not just to get law

degrees so they can get out the Patent Office, in some

instances \-- to pursue, perhaps, doctorates and to write

theses in certain areas \-- I know my aunt, when she was

working in the literature area at UCLA, she got her Ph. D.

for putting together a literature collection of the works

of a particular author. So this was an advance in that

field. I think by encouraging the examiners to get

additional degrees that are in areas of technology, I

think a great contribution could me made. And I think the

examiners will love you.

It\'s tough when you\'re running an agency and

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

121

examiners act like union members a lot of times. But I

think there\'s a lot that they can do for all of us. I

think, right now, the agency is probably moving more

towards being private. What happens to private companies

that start off in Silicon Valley is they try to go public

and offer some options. So I think by becoming more of a

private entity over time, and particularly by becoming a

private entity that has distributed locations, a federal

agency can learn a lot by being at different locations.

I think that\'s why you should be applauded for doing what

you\'ve done in Sunnyvale. It\'s really an incredible first

step. We\'re all great fans of Bruce Lehman. I mean, just

a wonderful beacon of light.

I remember back when I first got to know some of

the commissioners, Donald Banner, for example. You

referred to the Washington bureaucracy as a big

marshmallow. You know, you push in a little bit on that

marshmallow and really the marshmallow doesn\'t move much.

But when you see what Bruce Lehman did in Washington, I

mean the masterful way in which he got results, and the

masterful way all of you gentlemen are getting results in

the federal agency that is really going somewhere, and you

should be saluted. I think we look forward, our whole

community, we look forward to working with you and

continuing to have close contact with you.

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

122

Thank you very much for this opportunity to

speak.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY DICKINSON: Thank you, Mr.

Sabath. Thanks to you and your colleagues on the Silicon

Valley IP Law Association.

Do we have any questions? Will you take

questions?

MR. SABATH: Sure.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY DICKINSON: Steve has a

question. Mr. Kunin, sorry.

MR. KUNIN: Thank you, Mr. Sabath, for coming

here today to testify.

You made a comment which dealt with a comment

that Mr. Aharonian had made, with respect to the value of

becoming familiar with and having access to holdings in

local university or federal libraries. Do you have any

suggestions with respect to how regionalized or localized

industry, or bar associations, who perhaps are familiar

with and do have access to these local libraries, who

could provide information to the Office with respect to

the types of holdings that you find particularly valuable?

MR. SABATH: I think that knowledge, of course,

is distributed. I think what I would do is, at this point

in time, I would suggest that the agency task the SCI3

organization to put together a list of such contacts.

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

123

Because I think their mailing list, at least out here in

California, is one of the truly \-- they should really,

perhaps, have some meetings, whether with selected

individuals. I know some of the interest in a lot of

programs has dipped recently, probably because there

haven\'t been a lot of new federal laws relating to

patents. I think, if SCI3 shows the initiative of going

out and make some suggestions, because basically they\'re

out here all the time. They could have regular, a

regularity of contacts with the local community. Let them

define that list.

I\'d be personally glad to work with them. We\'ve

had a very satisfactory relationship.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY DICKINSON: Any further

questions?

\[No response.\]

Thank you very much. Appreciate it.

I\'ll call on Mr. Fishman now for his testimony.

I note that Sherm Fishman, it\'s always a pleasure to see

him when we come out here to San Francisco. Saw him last

year at the Independent Inventors Conference, and we are

very much looking forward to his testimony.

MR. FISHMAN: Thank you very much. I\'m happy to

see you.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY DICKINSON: Mr. Fishman, it

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

124

is my understanding you\'re here representing the Small

Entity Patent Owner\'s Association today. Is that correct?

STATEMENT OF

SHERM FISHMAN

SMALL ENTITY PATENT OWNER\'S ASSOCIATION

MR. FISHMAN: Yes. The Small Entity Patent

Owner\'s Association came into place about 1994, and I was

an associate. I was a founder, co-founder. And its

purpose is to help small entities find their way through

the maze. I attract almost a call a week from inventors

who somehow find their way to me. They tell me where they

are and what their trying to do, and say: Now, what\'s the

next step?

I\'d like to go to the topic of the hearing,

which is patent searches. And I have a written answer to

each of the questions, the 11 questions. Unfortunately, I

did not put the questions; I only have the answer. So I

can give you the answer first and maybe you can figure out

the question, or I can try to abbreviate the question and

then read you the answer and you\'ll have a copy of this,

of this memo.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY DICKINSON: Mr. Fishman, let

me make sure I\'m clear. You will be submitting written

testimony, as well as oral testimony?

MR. FISHMAN: Yes.

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

125

ASSISTANT SECRETARY DICKINSON: Very good.

MR. FISHMAN: I also have a letter from the

largest inventor\'s club in Northern California, which is

the Invention to Market Group in Santa Rosa. And I

understand that Dick Kelly will be there in the next few

weeks. And I have a letter from them pertaining to the

subject of prior art search, also.

I\'ll go through this material, and then I\'ll

answer any questions. And, then, if there\'s time, I would

like to tell you my prior art story. I usually tell it at

cocktail parties, but we probably won\'t have that

occasion. So I would like you to have that story; so, if

there\'s time, let me know.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY DICKINSON: We\'ll try to

make time for that. We\'re running a little short today,

but we\'ll try.

MR. FISHMAN: Okay.

Question No. 1: Our experience with independent

inventors is not the same as the professionals, who are

employed by firms, such as Intel, Sysco, 3COM. We find

that examiner prior art searches have been pertinent.

Question No. 2.: SEPOA, Small Entity Patent

Owner\'s Association, provides assistance to fledgling

inventors, and we follow the format of doing prior art

searches at the San Francisco Patent Depository, and

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

126

including such other publications as come to our

attention.

I might add, at this point, that I recently

collected all of the issued patent to Karl Mullis, who

invented the rays reaction for duplicating, replicating,

DNA. Got the Nobel Prize for it. And his patents, about

6 or 7 of them, if you put these altogether, you got a

textbook in biotechnology. So that the ancillary

information, other than specific patent prior art, is

voluminous these days. It was not in the 1960s when I

first started filing patents. But, today, it seems to be

pretty prolific, particularly in the biotechnology

sciences.

Question No. 3: We think the present rules are

adequate. We do, however, think that sending copies of

prior art, along with the application, is an additional

cost born by the applicant, since it can just as easily be

obtained by the examiner. Copies of publications, more

readily obtained by the applicant, would logically be

included with the application as a courtesy.

I\'m saying there that, when you file an

application, we\'re now asked to include all of the prior

art that we dig up. This can make the application a

couple of pounds. Although, Xerox machines now make it

pretty easy to copy them. Sometimes, a patent can be 20,

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

127

30, 40 pages, and independent inventors are not really

prepared to get into the business of making copies of

small books. The Patent Office examiners certainly have

access to all of the patents that we find as prior art.

And any articles that come out of magazines that I would

normally not expect the Patent Office to have, I would

think, well, certainly, I\'ll throw that into the patent.

I\'ve got it. Why should I send you looking for some

obscure journal.

Question No. 4: Prior art searches are

routinely done by independent inventors using the San

Francisco Patent Depository facilities. Other sources of

prior art generally are happenstance, which is \-- by that

I mean, we just stumble across these other articles. We

may have written them ourselves, or it maybe appeared it a

Popular Science Magazine, or something of that sort.

Popular Science and Popular Mechanics are good sources of

new products.

Question No. 5: Searches are limited to the PTO

and the IBM databases. Independent inventors should not

be burdened with the requirement to do foreign or PCT

patent searches. It is not a do-it-yourself project, and

should not be a requirement that search firm searches be

purchased. Independent inventors are low-bid buyers. We

do as much as we can. If we have to buy something,

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

128

oftentimes, it\'s prohibitive; we just can\'t do it. That

includes patent attorney services.

Question No. 6: We think that the search rules

are adequate, as it is, and that common sense usually will

prevail.

I don\'t think we should expand the bureaucracy,

but I think that, as the inventor clubs and organization,

such as mine, educate inventors in what constitutes an

application. They\'ll gradually improve from the

independent inventor community, although you can\'t compare

us with the capabilities of an IBM.

Question No. 7: This is pretty much the same as

Question No. 3.

Question No. 8: Pertinent papers authored by

the applicant should logically be attached to the

application; and, without making new rules, these papers

can be included in the definition of search. Some

author\'s papers may no longer be available, and

bibliography references may be sufficient and may be found

in libraries near the PTO.

So, here again, I think it\'s a question of

common sense without making it a requirement.

Question No. 9: Non-patent literature described

is indefinite and common sense, again, should prevail.

It\'s essentially the same as Question No. 8 and

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

129

making the requirement \-- making non-patent literature a

requirement. It lists a number of things which could be

burdensome.

Question No. 10: We think that relevant patent

prior art is being found; although, only the PTO would

really know how much undiscovered pertinent prior art is

brought to light in reexamination. If they are foreign

patents, then the foreign databases should be put into our

classification system and into our CDs in use at remote

depositories, such as San Francisco, SCI3 in Sacramento,

and other depositories around the country.

Question No. 11: This question asks about other

issues not covered by the preceding questions. My comment

here is: High technology in the electronics information

growth is bursting at the seams. New computer hardware

and software is not indexed as well as medical research,

which appears in journals, and then on the Index Medicus,

or Medline, or current contents in a variety of different

places where medical information is. The electronics

industry doesn\'t have that. Search engines on the

internet are moving in that direction. The database that

would be most useful for computer technology seems to be

at the Infoseek site. So, I would certainly go there

first.

And that is your 11 questions; and, if there are

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

130

any questions that I can answer, I will try to do that.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY DICKINSON: Mr. Fishman,

thank you very much for being here, and for your testimony

today.

Are there any questions from the panel?

\[No response.\]

Let me ask one. One with regard to the

requirement for searching. I note your comments. Let me

ask sort of a follow-up question, though.

Would you support a requirement that the

applicant disclose whether or not a search had been done?

And, I guess, the second part, if they indicated that a

search had been done, what were the results of that search

and where the search was conducted?

MR. FISHMAN: I can\'t imagine someone doing a

search and not putting it into the application. If that,

in fact, is happening, I\'m very surprised. It would

simply be an a priori thing. If you do a search, you\'re

going to put the results in the application.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY DICKINSON: Well,

occasionally, applicants, I would submit, find art in

those searches they don\'t wish to call to the Office\'s

attention, because they may or may not want to narrow or

otherwise compromise their patent application.

MR. FISHMAN: If that situation occurs, and you

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

131

would like to know have they done a prior art search,

under those circumstances, if that\'s what\'s happening, I

would say \-- it would almost be a stupid question \--

certainly ask the applicant, \"Have you done a prior art

search, and are those results in this application?,\"

without making it a requirement. It\'s simply a question.

This might suggest to you that there is something out

there and that they found it; and, if you looked, you will

find it. Or, you could ask them, again, what is that

prior art search? What did it result in?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY DICKINSON: Can I ask you

another question?

MR. FISHMAN: Certainly.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY DICKINSON: Several of the

speakers today have indicated that part of this problem,

or issue, rather, may be resources, more specifically lack

of resources. Some have suggested that the

appropriateness of possibly increasing fees in order to

address this concern. Some have even suggested as much as

a thousand dollars.

How would your organization, or other small

inventors, independent inventors, feel about increasing

fees in that manner to address this question of access to

prior art?

MR. FISHMAN: Increasing fees would certainly be

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

132

an inhibitory effect on submission of inventions by

independent vendors who, for the most part, are like Mr.

Ritter, who have relatively little assets to throw into

this sort of thing. I would say that, if fees have to be

increased then the small entity discount would have from

50 percent perhaps to 95 percent. You\'re talking about

\$10,000. You just won\'t have any independent inventors

submitting at all.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY DICKINSON: Thank you very

much. Any other questions?

\[No response.\]

MR. FISHMAN: Is there time for my story?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY DICKINSON: Oh, sure.

MR. FISHMAN: Okay.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY DICKINSON: I apologize, Mr.

Fishman.

MR. FISHMAN: Recently, around 1960, I was

active duty Navy, and Russia had put up Sputnik. And

Kennedy said, \"We can do that.\" And I said to myself:

God! It\'s cold up there. And if they\'re going to use

when of these little tilt mercury switches, they\'re going

to freeze. Mercury freezes at 40 below zero, the switch

won\'t work. Why don\'t we have a solid-state switch?

So, I was Navy Reserve, so I was going to

meetings from time to time. I was living in Boston.

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

133

Meetings were held at MIT. I was sitting in this lecture

room at a Naval Reserve Meeting, and this professor was

talking about petroleum catalysts. He kept on saying,

\"Fluid flow properties of a solid material.\" Solid

material? Fluid flow properties? And, in my mind, I

could see this picture, but tilt switch? Take the mercury

out and put in petroleum catalysts. Now all I had to do

was make the petroleum catalyst electrically conductive.

It took me a year to find my way to a company in

New Jersey who made copper ball bearings. Not only did

they make copper ball bearings, but these were small. I

mean small, small, small, like a powder. You put them

into a test tube and you tilt the test tube and they went

from one end to the other. It was beautiful. It was

Minneapolis Honeywell Mercury Tilt Switch, with no

mercury.

I went to the Navy and I said, \"I would like to

file on this, do you have any interst in it?\"

And they said, \"What is it? No, we don\'t \-- we

couldn\'t care less. We will give you a release.\" \-- Oh,

yes; by this time, I was active duty Navy \-- \"We\'ll give

you a release.\" And I filed on it. And I got a

first-office action back.

Now, I\'m talking about something that is

circulating around the planet, about as high tech as we

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

134

had at that time. And the prior art the examiner found

was an Indian merchant in Madras, in 1862, who had an hour

glass, with a series of electrodes going up the side, one

at the bottom, and I don\'t know what the heck he used as a

conductive material, but it was a sand hour glass and it

probably wasn\'t sand. But there it was. And this was

prior art that was going to throw my high-tech switch from

a device that was there circulating around the planet.

And I visualized this guy as somebody sitting, wearing a

diaper, sitting cross-legged in a mud hut somewhere, in

1862, in Madras, India. And this is what I had to argue

with as to why this solid-state switch shouldn\'t go up in

the next satellite that Kennedy said we can build.

Well, I had some friendly attorneys and they

pointed out to me the differences, and this made sense to

the examiner, and the patent subsequently issued. Never

got to ride in a satellite, but I keep on thinking about

that Indian merchant. I mean, this is 1960, or so, and

this \-- and now we\'re in 1999, and I have this picture of

that Indian merchant in Madras, in 1862, almost killing me

with a high-tech patent. I will take that vision of the

prior art with me when my stream comes to its end,

wherever I go.

There were some more stories I could tell you,

but they\'re really cocktail stories, and we\'ll have to do

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

135

that some other time.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY DICKINSON: Hopefully, when

we have the opportunity to have a cocktail. Thank you,

Mr. Fishman. We appreciate your testimony. That

certainly is \-- as a former chief IP counsel for a

petroleum company, I appreciate any story that has

petroleum catalysts in it. I\'ve filed many of those

applications.

MR. FISHMAN: Thank you very much. I appreciate

being here.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY DICKINSON: Thank you very

much, Mr. Fishman.

We have two more speakers, it is my

understanding. And I\'ll call first on David Cleveland,

who, as I understand it, is the Assistant Chief

Intellectual Property Counsel for the 3M Corporation; but

he is here today, I think, on behalf of the Minnesota

Intellectual Property Law Association.

STATEMENT OF

DAVID R. CLEVELAND, ESQ.

MINNESOTA INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY LAW ASSOCIATION

MR. CLEVELAND: Good morning!

And I suppose it\'s inevitable that I\'ll slip a

little bit into my biases as a corporate practitioner, but

I really am here on behalf of the Minnesota IP Law

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

136

Association.

We\'re an association of about 600 lawyers, who

practice full time in IP law, including about 400 who do

full-time work in patent law. Our organization has a

variety of large- and small-entity clients, dealing with

everything ranging from medical devices to tape, and

including a fair number of computer-related inventions..

I am, as I said, or as was said, an assistant

chief IP counsel at 3M, a company that makes about 50,000

products. I work principally in chemicals and

increasingly in optics, and I still write and file a few

patent applications myself.

I\'d like to thank you for letting me speak on

short notice. I was on vacation near Monterey, and found

about the hearing Friday at the ABA meeting, and drove up

here to participate.

I\'d like to thank the USPTO also for holding a

public hearing. Many of you may remember last fall the

proposals that were floated by the USPTO to change a

number of aspects of practice, including a requirement

that more than 10 citations be accompanied by a unique

description of each citation\'s importance relative to each

independent claim. Our own organization\'s members were

quite concerned, across the spectrum, about that

particular aspect of that proposal. A number of them

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

137

spent the Thanksgiving Weekend putting together written

comments, and submitting them to the PTO. One of the

comments being that we wished there had been a public

hearing on that proposal.

A number of parts of that fall proposal were

useful, and I hope will go forward. But my own feeling,

and I think our organization\'s feeling, is that we hope

the prior art provisions of that proposal have been set

aside.

The proposal today is directed to blossoming

technologies, but it has broader implications. I\'m going

to try and speak to some of those.

I think our basic view is that Rules 56, 97 and

98 are okay, as written. I spent some time reviewing some

of the comments in the MPEP and in the legislative history

of those rules. They were undertaken at that time, back

in about 1992, to make he barriers lower for applicants,

and encourage the submission of art, and to encourage

applicants to err on the side of submission, because

people will take differing views, as to materiality, and

will second guess what happens after the patent is issued.

I think most of us are satisfied, comfortable

with those rules. We\'ve been working with them for about

8 years now. And I believe there is a large and

consistent body of practice with respect to the submission

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

138

of material information. I believe it will be quite

discomforting to people if the bar is moved in way to

submit, or to cause retrospective examination of actions

that are taken, and subject applicants to criticism for

not doing what they believe was correct under the time.

I should mention that the standard, at least at

our company \-- and I think at most applicants \-- is to be

extremely careful. That\'s one of the things that prompted

the large amount of art that has been submitted to the

PTO. And the standard for performance here is basically

perfection.

Another comment I\'d like to make is that one of

the least expensive ways to assure oneself that you have

at least a respectable chance at a finding, eventually, of

validity, if you litigate the patent, is through good

searching. Most of the other mechanisms for testing

patent validity that might take place downstream, be they

pre-grant opposition, post-grant opposition,

reexamination, or litigation, are much more expensive than

simply having top-quality searching at the outset.

I\'ll that, at my own company, we employ about 2

dozen full-time searchers, and about 60 patent liaison,

who keep collections. We\'re one of the two companies in

the world, I believe, who subscribe to the full Derwent

tapes. We keep extensive databases. We search. I\'ll

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

139

disagree a little bit with Mr. Aharonian: We care a great

deal about quality. We put a lot of care into our

searches an spend quite a bit of money procuring and

enforcing patents. We would like more searching, and I\'ll

talk about that in a few minutes.

Let\'s talk a little about the question in the

notice.

I think, generally, that the Patent Office in

this country is doing a very good job in considering art,

but it is not the only source of information. We get a

much better result \-- as was said a little earlier, by Mr.

Brandt \-- when the applicant and the Office work together.

In fact, we get the best result when the applicant and

several offices work together. For U. S. patent

applications, I think they are somewhat deficient in

noticing, in particular, German national art and Japanese

art. You all know the numbers on how many Japanese

applications appear each year. There are also a number of

very significant applications filed in Germany by

companies who file only in Germany. I think those two

areas are areas that could use some additional attention.

The efficient way to do that is probably not to make U. S.

searchers in the PTO or elsewhere multi-lingual; but,

instead, to find a way to draw on resources of those

offices.

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

140

I think, in general, in this country, applicants

do do a pretty good job of submitting the art that they\'re

aware of. As I said, the standard in litigation is

perfection. And the degree of scrutiny \-- I\'ve had my own

patents litigated in several countries, and they\'ve held

up well. But I can tell you they\'re very closely looked

at. I think that\'s the experience of most people who have

had patents litigated.

The third question asked whether the rules and

procedures for obtaining prior art are effective. I

believe they work well enough and would like to see them

left as is, personally.

It is clear, I think, in most cases that

applicants do conduct a search. There have been questions

asked as to whether an applicant should be asked if they

have performed a search, or where the search was

performed. I should say that usually, for a

professionally written application, it is apparent, on the

face of the application, whether a search was performed

because, typically, it will discuss the art. If it

discusses the art in some detail, then, usually, you can

be assured that a search was performed. And if the file

history contains an information disclosure statement,

that\'s usually an indication that some sort of search was

performed.

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

141

However, I\'d like to thank Mr. Ritter for

appearing today because he\'s a reminder to all of us that

not everyone has the resources of a large company, or a

large business. There are many, many applicants who have

very limited resources, and who cannot afford a search.

They rely, in fact, on the Patent and Trademark Office to

perform their search. So a significant number of

applicants, among the people in our Association, or among

the people who come to members of our Association, come

and have very limited resources.

We have kids on farms with inventions, who come

to lawyers in Minnesota, or agents in Minnesota, and want

help. And they don\'t have any money. And they use the

Patent and Trademark Office as their search.

I think it\'s \-- I\'d ask \-- you\'ve asked us

whether IDSs are frequently submitted. I think, in fact,

the Patent and Trademark Office is in the best position to

answer that question, so I won\'t hazard a guess.

There were several questions involving whether

applicants should be required to conduct a search,

including where they searched, and so forth. I should ask

a little \-- what is the intent of a question like that?

Is it to permit the Patent and Trademark Office perhaps to

do less searching, for instance?

I think, in most cases, for small entities, if

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

142

you are, in effect, going to require them to make a

search, you must bear in mind that their search, if

privately done by someone who does it for a living, will

not be subject to small-entity discount fees. And while

some companies may pay 10 or 15 thousand dollars to have

an application prepared and filed, most small entities pay

much less. Most individual inventors are interested in

getting a case filed for \$3,000/\$4,000 at the most. And

that\'s for everything: search, lawyer\'s fees,

governmental fees. If they are required to perform a

search, that would mean a significant increase in their

costs, if it is to be a private search. And if it\'s to be

a good search, it will not be cheap.

For large entities, they want all the searches

they can get. There were proposals a few years ago \-- I

participated in some of the discussions to have what was

known as the super search by the EPO, the Japanese Patent

Office and U. S. Patent Office. And, for my client, we

like that. We do a search of our own, and we want a

search from each of those offices. We\'re heartened, in

fact, that the Japanese Patent Office has recently

shortened the deadline for requesting examination.

Because that\'s a signal to us that we may get search

results earlier.

We typically file in the U. S., and then file a

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

143

PCT application at 4 months, requesting a search in the

European Patent Office, so that we can hope to get that

search back, and the USPTO search, by the time we have to

proceed with the demand stage. Before we invest much

further in prosecuting a case around the world, we\'d like

all of the searches we can get.

I think I\'ll just defer to some of Mr. Brandt\'s

comments regarding submitting all non-patent literature,

or all prior art relied on, during drafting of the claims.

I think his answers were fine. Materiality is a better

standard; submitting all art would clutter the record.

There were some questions, you asked for

suggestions to get a little better collection of art

before the examiner. I have a few here. I mentioned the

super search and the four-month filing provision. I think

for applicants that have electronic copies of documents,

it might help the Patent and Trademark Office if those

could be submitted electronically, or if we could give the

Patent and Trademark Office a pointer to where the

document might be located on the Patent and Trademark

Office\'s own web site, particularly, if it\'s an

electronically searchable document. This will speed the

examiner\'s review of the reference if they can do an

electronic search for the relevant terms.

It might help to increase salaries for examiners

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

144

and to reduce turnover in the examining corps. The best

computer we have nowadays is still the human brain. If

you\'re familiar with the European Patent Office, their

examiners are quite well compensated. They\'re subject to

a tax exemption from German taxes, which makes their

income actually quite good. And they have very low

turnover in the European Patent Office. And their

examiners tend to become quite familiar with the art. And

I find that, in dealing with experienced examiners, they

don\'t need to spend as much time searching or reviewing

references because they\'ve read them before. So I give

you that simple suggestion as one that might help.

As another, I\'d encourage greater use of teaming

in the Patent and Trademark Office. We have conferences,

not conducted in all groups. When a case goes up on

appeal, one of the things I like about the European Patent

Office is that it tends to have a team of three examiners

involved in examination from the outset. A benefit of

that is that the examiners collectively will have a much

better grasp of the art than any individual examiner

might.

We have \-- I guess another thing that might help

in the scheme of things, in managing work in the Patent

and Trademark Office, would be to consider making

available a for-fee search. Right now, you can pay fees,

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

145

file an application, and, in effect, also purchase

examination. There is no private search available through

the PTO. This is available, for example, from the German

Patent Office. For about 500 DM, you can have a very nice

search done. They will even search the Russian

literature. They have examiners there that came from the

old East Republic, who are quite good at this, and they

have a very good collection.

An institute called IIB will conduct a search in

the Hague using the same databases as the EPO, and the

same personnel. It is an EPO quality search at a cost

roughly equivalent to the search fee in the EPO.

The Patent and Trademark Office might make

something like that available. Right now, a small

applicant who files to get a search from the PTO would

have to pay more than they might have to get if they were

only purchasing a search. This would be a way, in some

instances, then, to result eventually in better cases

being filed, or perhaps fewer cases being filed, because

the applicant would have a chance to reveiw the search.

I like Mr. Aharonian\'s proposal for a

Medline-type solution for some literature in other areas,

and I hope the Patent and Trademark Office could make

efforts in that area. We have very good collections of

patent literature in our own databases, and we use the

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

146

Copyright Royalty Tribunal in order to keep copies of

references that are available, under license, through the

CRT. But there are a large number of references for which

a Copyright Royalty Tribunal license is not available and

must be separately negotiated. It\'s quite time consuming

to procure those references and store them in a database.

If a public entity, such as the PTO, could do so, it might

make it easier for everyone.

I think that will \-- I will also comment briefly

on two other things that came up in comments or questions.

Mr. Jenckes earlier talked about a regime in

which the applicant would do a search in exchange for some

sort of expedited prosecution. I can tell you that, as to

my own client, we would never do that. We wouldn\'t use

such a system because we want extra searches. We don\'t

think that we\'re good enough to find everything, so the

more searches we can get the better. We would rather use

the PTO, have it do its search \-- which it does very well

sometimes, often \-- rather than miss that art.

Also, I guess I would, in response to Mr.

Kunin\'s question regarding post-grant opposition, that is,

in my view, a much more expensive and somewhat more

wasteful way of obtaining good patents than having them

well searched at the outset. I\'d urge you not \-- if you

do such a thing, to use the EPO model.

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

147

I spent five years as the head of the European

Office for 3M\'s IP Department, in Brussels. I attended

most of our oral hearings in opposition during that

period. I\'ve been in quite a few. It is not a model for

resolving disputes and getting to the bottom of things. I

much prefer the court system. We\'ve seen many instances

of people submitting false testimony, unreliable

testimony, testimony at the last minute. I\'m afraid that,

if you were to set up something that might be fair, you

would have a system approximating the interference system,

which is rather expensive and almost baroque, I think, in

comparison with other decision-making procedures.

Applicants would be much better off in front of a court,

than in front of an administrative panel, attempting to

determine inter partes assessments of validity.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY DICKINSON: Questions?

MR. KUNIN: Thank you, Mr. Cleveland, for coming

today and offering your testimony.

You may or may not be aware of this, but around

the 25th of May, there was a joint announcement by USPTO,

EPO and JPO of a concurrent search pilot.

MR. CLEVELAND: Yes.

MR. KUNIN: And, in view of your comments, with

respect to the desirability of getting the applicant to

cooperate, and getting as many searches as you can, what

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

148

are your views on this? Would your company, 3M, be

willing to participate in these kinds of pilots? Thank

you.

MR. CLEVELAND: Absolutely. I thought this was

a great proposal, since I first heard it, I think from

Brad Huther, about 6, 7 years ago, in a meeting in Geneva,

that discussed the super search. There was a lengthy

discussion then. We have always favored a super search,

or a comprehensive search, early in the process. It will

make patents much, I believe, much better written, and

claims much more clearly enforceable. We\'d be happy to

help in whatever way you want.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY DICKINSON: Any other

questions?

\[No response.\]

Thank you very much, Mr. Cleveland, for your

testimony.

MR. CLEVELAND: Thank you. All right.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY DICKINSON: We appreciate it

very much. Hope we didn\'t interrupt your vacation.

MR. CLEVELAND: That\'s all right, that\'s okay.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY DICKINSON: Thank you.

Our last, the last witness I have today is Mr.

Schipper, John Schipper, from the law firm of Schipper and

Truong, as I understand it. Sabath & Truong, I apologize.

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

149

I made you a named partner without realizing it.

STATEMENT OF

JOHN F. SCHIPPER, ESQ.

SABATH & TRUONG

MR. SCHIPPER: First, let me apologize for the

list of addressees on that letter I\'ve just distributed.

I wasn\'t aware who would be here. I was told Mr. Kunin

would be here. I wasn\'t aware of the others, or I

would\'ve certainly included you.

I\'m not speaking ex cathedra. I\'m speaking only

for myself, and it\'s based on a proposal I made to Bruce

Lehman, in person, about 5-1/2 years ago. I even have a

copy of the letter that I sent in \-- which, unfortunately,

was not responded to.

One problem that many examiners face is

identification of background references involving

algorithms. That\'s what I want to discuss today. I have

a proposal, if implemented, I think will help USPTO

examiners identify relevant background art and algorithms.

First, some history. I spent 16 years, happy

years, as a physicist research engineer and applied

mathematician before I jumped the fence and became an

attorney, and then a patent attorney. I worked in a lot

of areas, and I was pretty good in most of what I did. I

still enjoy doing some of it.

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

150

A major part of my practice now, both as a

technical consultant and also as a patent practitioner,

involves application of algorithms to physical, chemical

and computational processes. And I\'ve developed some

approaches to searching for prior art that might be useful

to examiners that are faced with algorithms and similar

mathematical constructs.

I perform fairly detailed novelty searches on

the technical inventions I\'m asked to evaluate. And, on

occasion, I\'ve submitted five to ten pages in a patent

application involving a discussion of this art.

Mercifully, I don\'t do that so much anymore because I

found that examiners were overwhelmed with them, and I try

to concentrate on the most relevant items.

Each year I probably blow 2 to 4 inventions out

of the water based on searches that I find, or do. I\'m

happy to do this; although, I must say, some of my

inventors are less keen on this. Because I feel that, one

of my responsibilities is to see that inventions are not

filed relying on old-hat algorithms, and things like that.

Succinctly stated, I propose to form a working

group of between 18 and 30 practicing engineers,

scientists and patent practitioners, with bents similar to

myself. These are people around the U. S. who know and

work with algorithms regularly in their work. Each group

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

151

member would have responsibility for one or several

technical areas, and would his or her expertise to

identify and classify algorithms and processes, both

computational and process algorithms, that have appeared

in technical journals and trade journals, in patent

applications, and laid-open applications, and things such

as that. This includes titles, abstracts, and, most

importantly, a characterization of the algorithm used and,

perhaps, some idea of which areas each one of these might

fit into.

We could start, perhaps, with all the things

published since 199, and then work backward to, oh,

perhaps 1945, or earlier. It depends on the area of art.

Obviously, if you\'re working in an area, such as lasers,

it doesn\'t make much sense to go back beyond about 1957

when Gordon Gould and Townsend Schallow began publishing

their work. That\'s just an example.

Any algorithm that appears in a publication

would be assigned to one or more of the classifications

and associated subclasses, some of which I\'ve set forth in

this letter. And the publication citation, the abstract

and algorithm characterization would be added to a

database that can be searched by an examiner, or by any

other interested person.

I also propose to develop, or help develop, a

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

152

uniform and integrated system for classifying and, most

importantly, cross-referencing the algorithms for use by

the examiners and others, and later by the public,

preferably using a read-only access controlled internet

site that can\'t be fooled with, and a protected database

that can be periodically updated and reformulated, but

only from a protected site at the Patent Office. I also

have some ideas for providing an incentive for members of

the working group to continue their efforts for the one to

four years that I estimate it would take to get a decent

database together.

By the way, the examiners could be begin using

this almost immediately, even though it would, as I say,

take one to four years to develop reasonably, thoroughly.

I set forth in the letter I\'ve given each of you

a list, which can certainly be added to, of classes that

I\'ve identified. I have 72 there. You could probably add

three or four times that number. But it\'s not a bad place

to start.

These are computational and process algorithms,

and things like that, that I\'ve identified in a search of

the technical literature, including my own work, both as

an inventor and as a patent attorney. Preferably, each of

these algorithm classes would be further decomposed into

many subclasses, much as patents are now. But the list of

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

153

classes and subclasses would focus on algorithms, and,

thus, would be more detailed in this area.

Each class/subclass combination would have a

list of sites to publications, including titles,

abstracts, algorithm characterizations, and such, that

might aid in narrowing a prior art search in a given area.

An examiner, or other interested persons, could identify

one or more of the class/subclass combinations that\'s

relevant to his or her search, and could narrow the search

to sites within the relevant combinations. I mean for

this to be a supplement to what the examiners normally do.

Not something to supplant it. The entire database would,

as I say, take probably one to four years to build and

fine tune, but the examiners could begin using the

database proably almost immediately.

The working group would need to work directly

with and through at least one USPTO representative to

place the information in the database format that would be

accessible to examiners and to other interested persons.

While the database is being built, I would suggest that

only the examiners and the working group members have

access so that it can\'t be, let us say, modified or fooled

with without good reason. And I think all changes and

additions to the database probably ought to flow through a

central authority at the Patent Office.

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

154

I\'ve given you my list of initial areas of

algorithms \-- I think there are about 72 here \-- which are

simply a start. I emphasize that this is simply a

beginning list of classes, and certainly would be added to

where appropriate. Some individual classes might require

further expansion into multiple classes. I can think of a

few right now. Each class would have, perhaps, a

miscellaneous subclass of items that don\'t fit anywhere

else. All other subclasses within a class would be

identified and developed as appropriate algorithms

developed for that particular subclass. I\'ve included

only enough details here to broadly outline the proposal.

Although, I have a great deal more that I\'ve been carrying

around with me.

I do searches, and try to do pretty thorough

searches, because I want to get the bad news at the front

end. I find I can control things and often respond to

things if I know what the bad art is, and I always cite

the best art I can find. In one or two instances I\'ve

been brought in, I found art that blew the invention out

of the water. The inventor and I sat down, did

co-inventing, and ended up with inventions that issued on

first-office action allowances. So I find it\'s worthwhile

in some instances.

I\'d appreciate any comments or suggestions for

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

155

change you have in this proposal. This could be

implemented without USPTO recognition or support. I think

it would be easier to get the people that I would need, or

someone would need, to develop something like this if the

USPTO is working here, as well. If the effort is

successful, this approach could serve as a guide for

developing databases in other areas. But I\'ve chosen

algorithm because it\'s an area that I know well, and it\'s

an area that permits fairly focused searching.

Let me spend a couple of minutes talking about

something that Bob Sabath talked about, the idea of

sabbaticals. I support the thing, with certain

modifications. I don\'t think the usual notion of a

sabbatical, that is a 3-month to 6-month, or perhaps 1

year time off to do work, is quite what is called for

here. But I would recommend that you use, perhaps, one-

to two-week sabbaticals, where an examiner can go to an

area, for example Silicon Valley, and work with some of

the interested practitioner, engineers, scientists, patent

people like myself, to identify art, broadly based art, or

perhaps more narrowly focused art, that the examiner, or

the examiner and his colleagues, are concerned with. He

could work at local universities and institutions that

have particular focuses. I know Berkeley\'s and Stanford\'s

libraries have particular focuses that I think could be

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

156

useful just to certain groups of examiners.

I\'ve often thought about going back to the

Patent Office and spending perhaps a day lecturing on one

or two areas that I know particularly well to try to bring

the examiners somewhat up to date to what\'s going on and

what to look for.

This could certainly be done at other

universities around the country. MIT has an excellent

technical library. I used it when I spent some time doing

graduate work there. I think the University of Chicago

has an excellent library in some areas. Probably the

University of Texas has some. There are various things

that can be done there.

But arrange for the examiners to meet with and

work with local interested practitioners, patent,

engineering, science, and with local companies that are

interested. I think some such as 3M would probably be

very happy to work with you. What we need is some kind of

opportunity to meet and coordinate what we do together.

That\'s pretty much all I have to say. I wonder

if you have any questions? I thank you very much for

letting me speak.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY DICKINSON: Thank you very

much, Mr. Schipper, for taking the time to be with us

today. We appreciate it.

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

157

Any questions? Mr. Kunin.

MR. KUNIN: Thank you, Mr. Schipper, for your

testimony, and also the specific proposal for developing a

database of searchable algorithms. It seems that you\'ve

given this quite a bit of thought.

If you have the ability to say so, could you,

perhaps, give us an estimate of roughly how much you think

such a venture would cost and how would you suggest that

it be financed?

MR. SCHIPPER: I think, for the most part, it\'s

going to be a labor of love to those of us who would work

on something like this. Certainly, you\'d need \-- there

would be a cost for reproducing copies of articles, and

what not, that would be submitted in addition to an

electronic database that would be set up.

With 30 people working, and I\'m assuming these

are fairly busy people, but they could set aside at least

20 to 25 hours a month to do this, perhaps at a cost of

twenty to twenty-five dollars per hour. Because, as I

say, I think this is a labor of love more than something

that we\'re going to be doing as part of our professional

practices. Let\'s see, with 30 people, oh, I suppose

you\'re talking about in the neighborhood of between \$1

million and \$5 million I think to develop something like

this. It can probably be done for less. I\'d have to work

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

158

with somebody at the Patent Office to work out some of the

details. It might involve a small amount of travel, but I

think most of that could be done just over the internet,

with the group getting together and working on that basis.

But I would hope to keep the cost low, and, at the same

time, get the database up and working for the examiners

within a short period of time.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY DICKINSON: Any further

questions? Mr. Godici.

MR. GODICI: I just want to thank you very much

for the constructive suggestions here. I think I can

speak for Todd, and the rest of us here, that we\'re going

to take this seriously, and take it under consideration.

Also, I\'d to possibly take you up on your offer of coming

and training some of our examiners in some of your areas

of expertise.

MR. SCHIPPER: I\'d like to do that.

MR. GODICI: We\'re always looking for folks to

help us out there. So I just appreciate you being here.

MR. SCHIPPER: Thank you very much, thank all of

you.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY DICKINSON: Thank you very

much.

Any further speakers today?

\[No response.\]

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

159

Well, on behalf of the panel, on behalf of the

U. S. Patent and Trademark Office, I want to thank all of

those who testified, and those who have raised other good

questions, and those who will submit written testimony.

I think today gave us, very clearly, an understanding of

some of the challanges that we face, which are interesting

and substantial. But, also, I think we elicited a number

of interesting suggestions, new suggestions in many cases,

interesting comments, and others, on the suggestions that

we put forth in our Federal Register notice, and some good

feedback on a number of those provisions, as well.

On behalf of our office, I want to thank you. As

Mr. Godici indicated, we will take all of this under very

careful advisement as we go forward. We will have one

more hearing on July 14, in the United States Patent and

Trademark Office offices in Washington. We will be

accepting written testimony until August 2; and, then, we

will hopefully come up with a plan of action as a result

of this testimony and these comments that will take us

forward to do some hopefully good work on this topic.

So, again, I want to thank everyone. If we have

additional comments, please sent them into us. And, until

the 14th, we will stand adjourned.

(Whereupon, at 1:05 p.m., the hearing was

concluded.)

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460

160

C E R T I F I C A T E

I hereby certify that this is the transcript of the

proceedings held before the

UNITED STATES PATENT AND TRADEMARK OFFICE

on Monday, June 28, 1999 at San Francisco, California, the

and that this is a full and correct transcription of the

proceedings.

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

Official Reporter

JAMES W. HIGGINS, CVR

San Francisco, California

\(415\) 621-2460