|
November 1961 Radio-Electronics
 [Table of Contents]
Wax nostalgic about and learn from the history of early electronics.
See articles from Radio-Electronics,
published 1930-1988. All copyrights hereby acknowledged.
|
 Benjamin Franklin Miessner was
an influential American radio engineer, inventor, and pioneer in electronics and
sound engineering, and holder of many patents. Among them, he is credited with inventing
the cat's whisker radio signal detector and various electronic instruments. Interestingly,
when you look at the
Wikipedia
entry for Miessner, it includes a hyperlink to
Wikipedia's Crystal
Detector page, but there is no mention of Miessner on it. On top of that,
ChatGPT
provided the wrong name for Miessner's wife, and incorrect patent numbers. You really
need to verify online sources! This 1961 Radio-Electronics magazine editorial
by Hugo Gernsback provided information
straight from the horse's mouth - Mr. Miessner himself. Miessner had many
problems with the both U.S. and foreign patent offices, including a petty lawsuit
where he tried to avoid paying an application fee. The
last patent
issued in 1961 was number
US3015103A, for Safety
Helmet, and as of this writing the highest patent number is around
US12150000B2,
for a communications system.
Our Patent Problem - A Proposed Solution
During correspondence with inventor Benjamin Miessner concerning his recent contribution
"Credit to War-time Inventors," the following letter was received. Radio-Electronics
believes the technical public will be very much interested in the practical solutions
it proposes for a number of our patent weaknesses.
Dear Hugo:
My thanks for your recent letter relative to our patent system. It occurs to
me that no better time could ever be found for constructive improvement suggestions.
The patent system has been much in the news lately, and American Patent System Week
should bring it into sharp focus all over the country.
I have read your letter several times. With much of it I agree; with some I do
not for reasons I will explain:
1. Patent Office's application log jam.
There are two reasons why application processing has fallen so far behind. The
first is that modern technology has grown so complicated, and the search area for
relevant prior art has so greatly increased that only those examiner-specialists
of long experience and knowledge of their subjects can deal effectively with new
advances in their fields.
The second is that, once a young examiner becomes proficient in his field, he
is lured away by private industry with higher pay inducements. Thus trained at taxpayers'
expense, private industry gets the benefit.
For the first trouble I would suggest that computer techniques could be used
for storing and quick retrieval of all the bits of prior art. If the FBI can find,
among many millions, a particular fingerprint; if the Internal Revenue Department
can find among many other millions particular facts concerning one individual taxpayer's
financial details, and if the registrar of prospectors' claims or the real property
tax department of any large city can find who owns each bit of land within its environs,
all merely by pushing the appropriate button, then the Patent Office should be able
to find very quickly what it needs to know in processing patent applications.
For the second trouble I would suggest either one or both of the following remedies:
a. That universities establish courses for graduate engineers and physicists
in patent engineering in all of the established fields of technology specialization.
These must first know their field's technology and its history; then they must know
patent law, search methods and claim analysis. This is the beginning only. At present,
an engineer with only a smattering of knowledge in a specialized field, and no knowledge
at all of patent law, enters the Patent Office as an assistant examiner - like a
shop apprentice. Or he may be a young lawyer, with a smattering of patent law and
no knowledge of technology.
There his every action must be supervised, in this training process, by senior
examiners and division chiefs. A great many of the processing "actions" by these
trainees are utterly worthless both to the Patent Office and to the patent applicant.
b. On entering the patent office these beginners should be put under contract
for, say, 5 or 10 years, with a modest starting salary and steady advances year
by year, as in the defense services. That scale of salaries should equal that in
private industry to stimulate his choice of this field in the first place.
It must be remembered that a good examiner must know a particular field of technology
intimately, and he must also know patent law equally intimately. He cannot acquire
all of this knowledge in any university curriculum, any more than a brain surgeon
can in a school of medicine. Only in the hospital or the Patent Office can these
novitiates fully learn their profession. If this is learned at taxpayers' expense,
as in our military academies, by training in the Patent Office, the young would-be
examiner should be required to stick with his job long enough for the taxpayers
to enjoy the fruits of that training. As it is now, private industry reaps these
benefits.
The French registration system is utterly worthless, and its "Sans Guarantie
du Gouvernement" is not one whit different from our own.
The German system is infinitely better than our own. The caliber of their examiners
is very much higher. Albert Einstein, for example, was once one of their examiners.
Their prior-art searchers are very thorough and competent. Once satisfied that an
applicant is entitled to the claims he seeks, the German Patent Office publishes
his disclosure and claims and by this asks all and sundry to present valid objections
based on previously unnoted prior art. This is much like our own marriage ceremony
wherein the officiating officer asks any one who has valid objections to the marriage
to stand up and present them, or "forever hold his peace."
Unless such valid objections to the issuance of a patent are presented within
a reasonable time (a month or two, as I remember), the patent is issued and stands
against any later contentions by others. Such a patent can be no "invitation to
a law suit" as are US patents.
I have, in a letter to Mr. Todd of the Patent Office, emphasized other ills of
our patent system. I must re-emphasize the shortness of the 17-year patent term.
Copyrights run 56 years, and now recommended is an increase to 76 years! A great
many of our most important patents expire before going into use, and the inventor
gets nothing for his creative pains, yet private industry and the public receive
the benefits far into the future.
[Mr. Miessner holds more than 100 American and many foreign patents, and is president
of the Patent Equity Association, a non-profit organization dedicated to reviving
and protecting the American patent system.]
|
