Welcome to the maze

As we saw in our discussion of patent law harmonization, while convergence in patent law is taking place at the level of principles, there is a long way to go at the level of rules. When it comes to the procedural rules relevant to the patent application process there is an enormous diversity of very detailed rules. For example, in the US the Consolidated Patent Rules amount to about 350 pages and a few thousand rules. This does not count the notices, guidelines and amendments that the USPTO issues in any one year relevant to its rules. The USPTO is not alone in administering a system of great rule complexity. In Australia, the Patent Regulations take up more than 490 pages.

The comparative advantage of patent attorneys lies not in their knowledge of patent law, but in their knowledge of many hundreds of rules and guidelines that make up patent procedure and the drafting of the claims that define an invention. A key part of their work is keeping track of the many deadlines that exist for the submission of documentation that accompanies the application process, deadlines which if not kept to will result in extra fees or in some cases the loss of the applicant's rights. The tedium of precise time and document management over what may be many years in relation to a single application, which may end up being withdrawn or rejected, is the price patent attorneys pay for their lucrative practices.