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PatentHawk on Michel/Lichtman interview

By Lawrence B. Ebert, Esq.

The Patent Hawk blog has a post on an interview of Chief Judge Michel by Professor Doug Lichtman, once of the University of Chicago (now at UCLA). One needs to read the post.

Some text on patent litigators:

The attorneys don't bring us the issues, don't frame up the issues in the tribunals below, and don't present these fundamental issues to the court, particularly whether the court should rehear...

We get 150 or so [petitions] a year. Half of them are in patent cases. And most of them are extremely weak. They don't carefully assess Supreme Court case law or Federal Circuit case law. They kind of conclusory fashion, they claim a conflict between case A and case B. They look like they're just going through the motions.

I'm surprised how unimaginative, unaggressive, shallow, most of the rehearing petitions are, and that very much handicaps the court.

Michel mentioned the examiner attrition problem at the USPTO: "Turnover is huge. For every 1,000 hired, you lose 600."

**See also

http://ipbiz.blogspot.com/2008/10/judge-michel-on-state-of-uspto.html

Full post as published by IPBiz on January 19, 2009 (boomark / email).