Machine A g e Overtakes Patents Bush Committee recommends machine searchi ng to help cut backlog of 2 0 0 , 0 0 0 patent applications has to S OMETHING Patent Office.
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Applications are piling u p as hard-pressed patent examiners cannot keep up with their staggering work load. Inventors—big and small—wait years for a patent grant. Constructive suggestions aimed at solving patent problems were given this week by an advisory group headed by Vannevar Bush, wartime research leader and president of Washington's Carnegie Institution. The group set out to investigate the possible use of electronic machines in patent searching. Their conclusion: machine searching is practical and should begin at once. Searching has been one of the major snags in Patent Office operations. Before a patent can b e granted, an examiner must wade through hundreds of old patents, in some cases. T h e Bush Committe feels that this process can be speeded u p substantially b y t h e use of punched cards, magnetic recording techniques, and photographic methods. Patent searching by p u n c h e d cards is not new. Patent Office researchers reported the success of such a project at the 120th national meeting of the ACS in 1951. Many chemical patents were found in t h e earlier study to b e well suited for machine searching. Simple chemical structures could b e coded and used to m a k e up more complicated molecules. For example, sulfathiazole was broken d o w n into three groups for searching purposes. The over-all groups included aromatic primary amines, aromatic amides from sulfonic acids, and heterocyclic thiazoles. T h e results of this earlier work were cited by the Bush Committee as showing the practicality of using machines for certain patents. T h e committee estimates that machine searching of 300,000 composition patents is immediately feasible. It goes on to say that this type of searching is cheaper, faster, a n d more accurate. Machines are not patent panaceas, t h e Bush group emphasizes. Some patents are not a d a p t e d to this type of searching. In addition, no machine has b e e n developed to date which is especially suited to patent work. H a n d in h a n d with the difficulties in searching go problems of reclassifying old patents. Through the years, new technologies are developed and new types of patents come on the scene. T h e s e patents are placed in outmoded p a t e n t classifications which may treat a whole spectrum of pateats as a single ISO
category. How this can slow patent procedures is shown by a Bush Committee example: floating golf balls. Before the bulky classes were broken down, 320 patents had to be searched. Afterward, only five were looked at. T h e Bush Committee also recom-
mended that a research and development unit should be established in t h e Patent Office. This g r o u p , freed from day-to-day searching, should continue studies of classification processes and how automation can b e p u t to use. The National Bureau of Standards and the Patent Office should also start a development program seeking machines and techniques specifically adapted to Patent Office operations, says the Bush group. T h e Commerce Department should also set u p an advisory committee to g u i d e the work.
INVENTOR APPLICATION FILED 1955
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FIRST DECISION: APPLICATION REJECTED BY PATENT EXAMINER
1956
1957 PATENT AMENDED: RESUBMITTED BY INVENTOR
FINAL DECISION: APPLICATION ACCEPTABLE
1958
poiai 1958 PATENT GRANTED
1959 3 YEARS, 7 M 0 S .
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