Re: Outsourcing patents to India

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On 4/06/04, Barbara Rempel wrote:
>>> Does this mean the beginning of the end of U.S. patent
>>> prep/pros attorneys? This amazes me. When I earned my law
>>> degree after getting a masters degree in engineering, I
>>> thought I'd at least be safe in this field of law. Now I see
>>> we are not safe anywhere.
>
>
> This is very disconcerting. I am really concerned and would
> love to know where to start in fighting this. I have a master's
> in electrical engineering, currently unemployed, (by choice) to
> spend a little time with husband who is pilot (great job -
> cannot be outsourced). But my daughter is a graduating master's
> degree candidate in Electrical Engineering at MIT. She's a
> serious person who works her &^&37;$ off!! Her plan was to
> safeguard her career from outsourcing by going into PATENT LAW.
> If she does this, she will kill herself for another 4 or so
> years, to come out with a job where she can make $30 per hour
> (or way less) competing with people from India???? I know these
> guys are smart. I worked with MANY of them at Intel Corp when I
> was an FPGA designer. But we are not on a level playing field
> with them when they can live like kings at $10k per year! I
> strongly believe in capitalism, but the theories of Ayn Rand and
> others did not anticipate the global climate we now have. Their
> economy will not ramp up to ours to "equalize" the supply/demand
> equation because there is not a decade long ramp up period.
> Just come to USA, gain skills over a year or two period, go back
> home and electronically transfer work to wherever. I don't want
> to be a whiner. I want to be an activist who can productively
> educate the powers to be and lobby for our home grown technical
> professionals. We cannot recruit engineers and scientists (you
> know how hard the preparation is for these jobs - not like a
> month or two for truck drivers who might nowadays have a
> brighter future. It's a travesty! Please dialogue with me. I
> really do want to get something started!!!
> barbararempel@yahoo.com
> Thanks,
>>

If your daughter wants to be a patent litigator, then she is safe.
There is currently a boom in patent litigation, and it doesn't
look like it will slow down any time soon. Hugh awards for
infringment are fanning the flames, and companies such as Acacia
and Pangea are trying to copy the Lemelson paradigm and success
rate-- applying overly broad patent claims (the patents in most
cases they bought from individual inventors) to existing
businesses/products/processes. Most of these patent holding
companies try to extort money from many businesses by
offering "reasonable" license rates (usually below a nuisance
value) that they know most companies will pay to avoid the high
cost of infringement. But sometimes several companies in an
industry join together to fight the patents and hire patent
litigators. These types of jobs cannot be outsourced to India or
anywhere else. As for patent prosecution, the only somewhat
plausable defense is that the Indian contract workers cannot
actually represent anyone before the US Patent & Trademark Office,
so someone in the US has to at least review the drafts and then
file them. Of course, these people can be patent agents who make
considerably less money than patent attorneys. Thus, it seems that
certain tasks that a patent attorney used to perform like drafting
patent applications, will go by the wayside. However, who will
respond to the Office Actions? Patent agents can represent
applicants and handle such matters, but by and large they do not
know the law and do not know how to make strong arguments that are
backed up by court decisions. Some companies that use Indian help
to draft applications may also find out eventually that although
those people can write a fairly good detailed description of the
invention, they do not know how to draft claims, which are the
heart of the application and define the invention. Good luck
asserting an "important" patent that allegedly protects your most
important product line if it contains badly crafted, very
restrictive, claims. Thus, I think there still will be many roles
that a competent patent prosecution attorney can play. But it
still would be helpful, at least in the short run, if a patent
prosecutor has licensing, due diligence, product clearance,
opinion letter drafting and other transactional experience to fall
back on, at least for the short term.

Re: Outsourcing patents to India, 5/22/04, by Kibitzer.

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