cross post: re: patent scam
Cato
> Do you have to be employed to keep your green card? I am overseas,
> and involved in patents. I'm a US citizen and want to become a US
> patent agent. But the abuse I see over here in Asia is amazing. They
> get an unemployed Chinese engineer to pass the patent exam in the US,
> then set up a dummy company in the US that "hires" the new patent
> agent so he can get his green card, then literally flood the US patent
> office with thousands of translations of Chinese patents a year, all
> using the signiture of the patent agent. The patent agent could
> literally be dead, they also literally also use a rubber stamp for the
> signiture.
>
> To be a US patent agent, you must be a US citizen or hold a green
> card.
>
> Another way to put my question again is: What happens if you are a
> non-US citizen with a green card, and you lose your job as a patent
> agent, say, working for a legit patent law firm (or quit, as it is
> much more profitable to simply dump translations of foreign patents on
> the USPTO using an illigitimate business address)? Do you get to keep
> your green card. Can you be self-employed (as a patent agent, say) if
> you have a green card?
>
> Any replies would be greatly appreciated.
Can you elaborate? What is the motivation for this "scam"?
BTW, I don't think you have to have a green card; I work with two H1B
visa patent agents.
Alun Palmer
news:8e5b6c2b.0210...@posting.google.com:
An interesting mixture of patent law and immigration law. I am a self-
employed US patent agent with a green card. There's no problem with that
as such. If I lose resident status I will be struck off as a US patent
agent, however.
It is impossible to leave the US for more than 2 years without losing
one's green card. It is also impossible for someone in the US on a work
visa (H1B or any other kind) to maintain immigration status without a job,
but that doesn't apply to green cards.
This brings us to the next point- residence for USPTO purposes clearly
does not mean residence for immigration purposes. Work visa holders are
specifically non-resident for immigration purposes, even though they live
in the US, and yet they can still be patent agents or patent attorneys.
Residence for PTO purposes seems to mean residence in it's dictionary
sense, i.e. just living in the US, as far as it's possible for anyone to
tell. If you no longer have a green card but you have a place of residence
available in the US are you resident for PTO purposes? Maybe not, because
you don't have a legal right to live there permanently, but it's at least
arguable.
A more interesting line of attack is the precedent of In Re Griffiths.
This decision prohibits states from having residency requirements for
atorneys. What's good enough for the state bar may well be good enough for
the patent bar. That's not just my view, it's the view of Professor
Kayton, founder of one of the two major patent bar courses (PRG). I think
that if and when I decide to pack up and go home I will file a 183
petition citing Griffiths and asking to stay on the register. It's worth a
try.
As for 'flooding the PTO' with translations of foreign applications being
a scam, that's laughable. It's standard practice for thousands of
American-born patent attorneys/agents. Foreign filing is all part of
regular patent practice, so I'm not sure what you are driving at. I'm
certainly not filing loads of translations (actually not any). But there
again, my native language is English!
More seriously, to sign a paper to be filed in the PTO, I have to be aware
of at least what it contains, and am responsible for the contents,
although I don't have to read every word of it (in reality I do read every
word, but it's not required). If an agent signs things without knowledge,
or allows a signature stamp to be impressed on documents when they don't
even know those documents exist, then those are serious violations of the
code of ethics. It has been alleged that some invention promoters in the
US use retired practitioners because they don't care about disbarrment. I
imagine similar considerations might apply to some unemployed people in
third world countries, but I doubt if engineers are often unemployed in
such countries (I could be wrong about that, though).
If you want to become a US patent agent, I wish you every success. As you
are a US citizen, you can even practice abroad without any problem. You
have to have a technical degree, or a degree plus enough credits in
technical subjects, or pass the Foundations of Engineering test, before
you can take the patent bar, though.
Alun Palmer, US Patent Agent
johnlocke
wrong word. Everything's done now by efiling here, and since we know
our US patent agent's green card holder's password, all we have to do
is file our one to two thousand or so specs a year with the USPTO,
using the US address of our patent agent's "company".
When the office actions come rolling in, he/she faxes them here and we
have a rolling number of English speaking tech ex-pats each of whom
stays with us for a few months frantically replying to first and
second office actions before they quit, most of whom are in their
early twenties and have never seen a patent before in their lives.
me I'm just an editor/translator... You're saying all this is on the
up and up?
Alun Palmer
news:5c8f51f3.02103...@posting.google.com:
No. The person with the registration number has to be aware of the content
of everything filed, as I said before. He or she also has to review the
work of each of these other people before it can be filed, as they cannot
prepare anything in their own right. From what you say that isn't
happening. The only way this would be OK would be if these were all your
company's own inventions, i.e. anyone could do he work 'in house' if they
were filing 'pro se'.
Apart from these ethical violations, a lot of apps must be going
abandonned if the people actually writing the responses truly know nothing
about patent law and their work isn't being reviewed, which is a foolish
waste. I suspect, however, that although you don't mention it their work
is actually being reviewed by foreign patent agents. The foreign patent
agents may have a semi-decent comprehension of US law, some of them may
even have a very good grasp of it. That doesn't mean that what they are
doing is right, though. BTW, if you tell me the name of the agent I have
to report them.
Alun Palmer, Registration No. 47,838
Isaac
> johnloc...@yahoo.com (johnlocke) wrote in
> news:5c8f51f3.02103...@posting.google.com:
>
>> OK, so I guess the green card doesn't matter, and I think scam is the
>> wrong word. Everything's done now by efiling here, and since we know
>> our US patent agent's green card holder's password, all we have to do
>> is file our one to two thousand or so specs a year with the USPTO,
>> using the US address of our patent agent's "company".
>>
>> When the office actions come rolling in, he/she faxes them here and we
>> have a rolling number of English speaking tech ex-pats each of whom
>> stays with us for a few months frantically replying to first and
>> second office actions before they quit, most of whom are in their
>> early twenties and have never seen a patent before in their lives.
>>
>> me I'm just an editor/translator... You're saying all this is on the
>> up and up?
>>
>
> No. The person with the registration number has to be aware of the content
> of everything filed, as I said before. He or she also has to review the
> work of each of these other people before it can be filed, as they cannot
> prepare anything in their own right. From what you say that isn't
This point was the subject of recent discussion in this group. Where
does the responsibility to review and understand the work of others before
filing come from?
Has a person with the registration number done anything unethical
if he simply (as directed) files work prepared by a client exactly as the
client provides it. What if the agent simply makes sure that the form is
correct but never actually attempts to understand the invention described
in the application? Is that an ethical violation if it is the service
that the client is paying for?
Isaac
Rahul Dhesi
>Has a person with the registration number done anything unethical
>if he simply (as directed) files work prepared by a client exactly as the
>client provides it. What if the agent simply makes sure that the form is
>correct but never actually attempts to understand the invention described
>in the application? Is that an ethical violation if it is the service
>that the client is paying for?
Is there an injured party? If so, which is that party?
--
Rahul
Cato
John, this is a very interesting setup that you have given us a
picture of. Can you tell us more about it?
I think this sort of operation could undercut all of us. Look at what
has happened to the software programming industry--it is dead in the
water right now, and a major factor there is the outsourcing of
programming jobs. It looks to me as if what JOhn is describing here
is the outsourcing of patent prosecution.....
Actually, I think it is a scam. I have heard that some of the people
who do patent drawing are outsourcing their work to India. But this
is of a much greater magnitude and importance. I wonder if the client
knows what is going on here?
PLease, give us any information you can.
Thanks
Alun Palmer
news:slrnas2via...@latveria.castledoom.org:
You have an interesting point. It is regarded as fairly unremarkable to
file an application unchanged on the direction of a foreign agent. The
same is not usually true when it comes to filing a response. On a
practical level this may be because it is easier, and always possible, to
fix the application later, but this is not so with a response. As I said
in a previous thread, it seems that deference is given to foreign agents,
and to us when we are in the same position, without necessarily any legal
basis existing for doing that.
By signing a paper, we are undertaking that we have checked the validity
of any legal arguments in it, amongst other things (the list is long, and
is contained in 37CFR s.10.18). Since an initial filing doesn't present
legal arguments as such, filing what we are given at that stage is
relatively uncontentious. This doen't hold true when we are signing a
response, which generally does present arguments. If the response was
written by an unregistered person, whether a foreign agent, a person
working for them, or any other person in any country, then we have to
check more than form, we have to check that we are presenting arguments
that are warranted in law and facts that are true or beleived to be true
(check s.10.18(2) for the exact wording of what we have to check). This
still holds true if the person preparing it is registered, but I am the
one signing it. Usually what we are given will not be correct as to form,
and will have to be re-written anyway. Even if the response written
overseas is correct as to form, we still have to check the arguments, or
we can't sign it. In 'John Locke's (surely not his real name)'s post, the
agent was not checking anything, as responses written overseas were e-
filed without his/her knowledge. This is not permitted by the rules, which
provide that the patent may be held invalid and the practitioner subject
to disciplinary sanctions.
In short, in answer to Isaac's questions:
1) This responsibility to review the work of others comes from the rule
identified above (37CFR s.10.18);
2) It is almost always an ethical violation in a response to file it
without analysing the invention, although probably OK in an initial
filing.
I am probably sticking my neck out a little here, but I feel it's
important to identify what the real problem is.
Alun Palmer, US Patent Agent, Registration No. 47,838
Isaac
Thanks for entertaining my question. I can see the issues with a response
can be different than the initial filing. Perhaps I took the phrase
"aware of the content of everything filed" more generally than was
intended.
Isaac