As amended in 1999, 35 U.S.C. § 6 authorizes the Director of the Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) to appoint all administrative patent judges of the Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences.

Patent Failure examines the current state of the American patent system based on the way it has traditionally been treated–as a type of property system. Using the yardstick of property rights and the economics they influence, Bessen and Meurer analyze the costs and benefits of patents to innovators.

Patent lawyers and software giants whom they are representing (also lawyers that become patent trolls) jeopardise emerging companies, almost all of which do not want software to be patentable

Actually, I don't think we should kill all the patent lawyers. Some of my best friends are patent attorneys -- no, really. But I'd happily stick a knife into the American patent system.

"Are Microsoft’s patent lawyers playing possum? Or are they really as clueless about what makes open-source software tick as they seem?"

Prominent legal counsel the Software Freedom Law Center said that the legal terms covering Microsoft's Open XML document formats pose a patent risk to free and open-source software developers.

The Patent and Trademark Office has now made clear that its newly developed position on patentable subject matter will invalidate many and perhaps most software patents, including pioneering patent claims to such innovators as Google, Inc.

We (Bessen and Meurer) received a nice note from Judge Plager letting us know that he cited our book, Patent Failure, in his recent speech where he called for rethinking patent law by returning to its origins in property law.

Criticism of the patent system is increasing and abolishment too is being considered for what became a hindrance - not a facilitator - to science