Down the Rabbit Hole to the U.S. Patent Office

by: Sue Prent

Tue Mar 01, 2011 at 18:00:00 PM EST

A full page ad from Vermont Public Interest Research Group (VPIRG) and the Vermont Society of Certified Public Accountants (VSCPA was the first I heard of an Alice-in-Wonderland twist to U.S. patent laws that has apparently allowed hundreds of patents to be filed, not on tax-prep software, but on actual tax filing strategies covering retirement plans, workplace compensation, financial investments, charitable giving, estate planning, etc.  That's right, should you be so bold as to prepare your own taxes using tax law and your own native intelligence to arrive at some of the same strategies in filing your own taxes, you could be sued by the patent holders.

Relatively few of our readers are likely to be significantly impacted by patents in those areas, but the future implications for the rest of us are clear.  According to the ad:

Many of these tax strategy patents cover a wide range of important but common forms of compliance that you may be already using without permission from the patent holder...Based on current patent applications filed at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, we are extremely concerned that, if nothing is done, these sorts of outrageous patents will entend to other tax-related issues affecting Vermonters' lives, such as planning for a college education, health care savings programs, and life insurance.

It goes on to commend Sen. Patrick Leahy for his efforts to correct patent law so that such strategies would be eliminated as patentable applications.

If, as a small inventor, you finally make it through all the hoops and jumps and are awarded your patent, it's arguable whether you will ever see any financial reward to offset the cost and aggravation.  For one thing, you have only a very limited number of years in which to profit from your patent before it expires, necessitating another costly process for renewal.  

Meanwhile if you've actually succeeded in patenting a marketable idea, anyone can introduce even a tiny tweak to your original idea and bypass your patent entirely.

To make matters worse, the patent office is so clogged-up and backlogged with frivolous and even vanity patent applications that by the time a patent is actually issued, your product or process may already be irrelevant. Nevermind the fact that much of the manufacturing world is beyond U.S. control and will ignore U.S. patents altogether. A friend in the software sector tells me they don't even bother with patents anymore, preferring the more efficient copyright system to offer some security in their fast-moving industry.

One of the funnier moments in my husband's experience with the patent office came when he finally received notification that his application was successful.  In the envelope accompanying the patent was a promotional flyer, sort of like something you'd get with your bank checks.  My husband's success as a "patented inventor" was heralded importantly, and he was offered the opportunity to purchase a couple of extremely tacky commemorative items to display to his friends and family!

I'm glad to read that at last some effort is being made to curb the runaway bureaucracy at the patent office.  It would be nice to think that protection for the fruits of American ingenuity is possible without exposing the beleaguered taxpayers to more predatory litigation.