Re: Seriously?
Given that they are then reviewed by a patent officer with extremely limited knowledge of the field (and very limited access to relevant journals
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Surely that could be one of the ways in which the new search engine is helpful. Patent registration comes in, search a few keywords on google. "Oh, something pretty similar already exists. Rejected, too many similarities to patent 31337"
It'd be good if there were a multi-stage process to patent applications though.
Stage 1: Auto reject. Using tools similar to googles new patent search engine, or the plagurism tools they use on university papers.
Stage 2a: Approved patents go forward for manual approval
Stage 2b: Rejected patents get sent back to person applying, if there are few similarities to other patents they can appeal the rejection through a special appeals board who know it's been rejected, these people then check the other patents it's similar to before accepting / rejecting
Stage 2c: Rejected patents get sent back to person applying, if there are a great deal of similarities all they can do is reword and resubmit, or give up.