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Patents

Patent Office Admits Truth — Things Are a Disaster 278

An anonymous reader writes "For years the US Patent and Trademark Office has published data to show how well it and the patent system were running. Under new leadership, the USPTO has begun to publish a dashboard of information, including a new look at questions like how long does it really take to get a final answer on whether you will receive a patent or not? The pat answer was, on the average, about 3 years. But with the new figures, it's obvious that the real number, when you don't play games with how you define a patent application, is six years. The backlog of patents is almost 730K. And the Commerce Department under the Obama administration wants the average down to 20 months. How does this happen? Only if everyone closes their eyes and pretends. It's time to take drastic action, like ending software patents. As it is, by the time companies get a software patent, there's little value to them because, after six years, the industry has already moved on."

Comment Re:the problem with drupal... (Score 1) 65

Point updates you can skip. Major updates do need to be hit. For example, going from 4.8 to 6.0 can cause trouble. It's possible but you have to know what your doing. 5.0 to 5.7 shouldn't be a problem and I don't remember that ever being an issue.

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