Inventors naturally solve problems that others have not. Tom Waugh had a successful business in Alabama, providing fittings and parts for utility poles and electrical systems. Utility poles must be strong and durable, especially tall ones with many lines. The metal utility poles that existed before Tom got involved required taking large sheets of metal and bending and welding them into poles. It worked but took a lot of time and money. Also, these poles had seams that were potential weak points.
Tom wondered if they could be cast in one piece by pouring molten metal into a rotating mold that would force the molten metal to the outside wall of the mold, where it would harden. Considering that the poles could be as long as 100 feet and weigh several tons, developing this into a workable invention wouldn’t be a simple project. There were also problems like the fact that the pole is wider at the bottom than at the top, so there would be a tendency for more metal to collect at the bottom of the pole.
To have the equipment needed to test and develop his invention, Tom had to go to Turkey. He succeeded. The video below shows some of the process. This technology could make a tall, seamless pole made of ductile iron in one minute. One minute!
Tom found a large utility corporation interested in licensing the technology – McWane, Inc. He entered into an agreement with them and proceeded to show them everything. But things didn’t go according to the agreement. Rather than pay Tom royalties, McWane decided to use the PTAB to invalidate Tom’s patent.
The Destruction of the US Patent System
For any readers who aren’t up to speed on the destruction of the US Patent System, the PTAB is the Patent Trial and Appeal Board. This administrative court was created by a law that was lobbied into existence by Big Tech and a few other large corporations. Before the PTAB, patent infringement battles would take place in a real court (Article III) with a lifetime-appointed judge, a jury, and adequate due process. The inventor had a reasonable ability to win. Now, most infringement battles end up at the PTAB, where three government employees are called Administrative Patent Judges, there is no jury, and very limited due process. 84% of the time, the patent is effectively invalidated!
Denied Right to Defend Your Rights
A particular part of Tom’s story helps explain how unjust the PTAB is. There was a key point during the PTAB trial, where Tom’s attorney was asked an important question about the invention that he couldn’t answer. Tom realized that everything could hinge on this answer. The attorney was totally stuck, so Tom stood up and said, “I have the answer,” and the judge said, “NO, YOU CAN’T SAY ANYTHING!” Tom sat back down and watched his life’s work being taken from him.
Why doesn’t the inventor get to say anything in a PTAB trial? Would an inventor answering a question actually have any negative effect on the trial? How great is the injustice of not allowing him to speak when his livelihood is on the line? In a real court, Tom would have been able to testify and answer that key question. Which might have been the difference between winning and losing. Every inventor and patent-based startup should at least have access to actual justice, which is only afforded in real courts now.
Like many other inventors with hugely valuable patents, Tom’s patent was invalidated. McWane has now sold hundreds of millions of dollars worth of these seamless poles. Wherever you are, if you see a metal utility pole that is round and smooth, it is one of Tom’s.
If you’ve read my other articles, this is just another example of an inventor developing and patenting something truly valuable and then having a large entity use our broken US Patent system to take the invention without paying the inventor anything. This is as un-American as it gets.
The right of intellectual property ownership of any American, from any walk of life, was the revolutionary idea that the Founders of America had. It immediately made America very different than the rest of the world. It enabled America to lead the world in innovation, stay ahead of our adversaries, and become the place of the American Dream. This right has been almost entirely lost due to a bad law and bad Supreme Court Decisions. The result is a handful of corporate monopolies heading toward the eventual control of nearly everything, and China, rather than America, leading in 37 of 44 crucial technologies.
If we are to have any chance of achieving the kind of prosperity and security we’ve had in the past, we must restore this key cornerstone of America – effective patent rights for inventors and startups.
A legal business contract between two parties exists when there is clear commitment. The United States Patent and Trademark Office enters into a CONTRACT with an inventor when the USPTO accepts and acknowledges, in writing, the receipt of the inventor’s application payment, the patent specification, the patent claims, the prior art information disclosure, and accepts the inventor’s SIGNATURE.
The USPTO is described in official documents as a fully fee-funded agency consistent with standard private sector practice. It once provided requisite legal and administrative services including examination, allowance and issuing of a patent upon receipt of a prescribed fee, and also undertook to maintain the patent in force on subsequent receipts of prescribed renewal fees.
The USPTO changed on September 16, 2011, from being an agency that (1) SELLS to inventors the right to take legal action against others who are infringing their patents, to being an agency that (2) also SELLS an additional service by way of the PTAB, to legal entities that are engaging in infringement of issued patents, for the purpose of assisting them by procuring reasons to invalidate the patents that the USPTO had previously examined and issued.
Some people argue that the purpose of the PTAB is to “weed out bad patents”. This argument can be seen to be dishonest because it dismisses as irrelevant the fact that all patents are examined by qualified patent examiners prior to being allowed and being issued. The infringers are required by the USPTO to pay a substantial fee. PTAB personnel involved in the patent invalidation process are being given incentive bonuses by the USPTO.
It is important to put aside what people say they are doing, and to focus on what people are actually doing. They will say they are “assessing the quality of the patents”, but what they are intent on doing is invalidating patents that have previously been issued by the USPTO, IN EXCHANGE FOR MONEY, and they are doing it on the BASIS OF OPINION, hence the asking for payment coupled to the carrying out of the invalidation constitutes officially sanctioned CORRUPTION.
A report published in August, 2016, by the US Department of Commerce Office of Inspector General Office of Investigations, number 14-0990, described an analysis of the patent examiners’ time and attendance details had revealed that at least 415 out of a total of 8,399 examiners had charged the United States Patent and Trademark Office $ 18,313,718 for working from home for 288,479 hours they had not worked, over a 15 month period.
The worst offenders identified by the analysis received above-average performance reviews and took home generous bonuses as they were falsifying their time sheets. The administration of the USPTO appears to have politely declined to take requisite action despite the presentation of corroborated evidence of malfeasance. The USPTO has an unusually close relationship with its unions.
This suggests that inventors, who became victims of the Patent Trial and Appeal Board ( PTAB), and who have been suspecting that the Administrative Law Judges of that quasi-judicial administrative body, a department of USPTO, to adjudicate patent disputes, had accepted financial incentives from corporations who had been infringing their patents, are very unlikely to be wrong.
It’d be great if some of the big names in the media would mention the PTAB. Molly Metz (the jump rope lady) and others have good illustrative stories for people in the patent world. It often takes a story with some major emotional hook to get wide spread attention. Look at how many people look at cat or puppy videos, acts of violence, car wrecks, bridges falling down, etc.. Might there be a way to tie in damage from the PTAB with a story that culminated with a sensational outcome ?
Just a random thought I wanted to throw out there.