Duties
Patent examiners review patent applications to determine whether the claimed invention should be granted a patent. The work of a patent examiner usually includes searching patents and scientific literature databases for prior art, and examining patent applications substantively by examining whether the claimed invention meets the patentability requirements such as novelty, "inventive step" or "non-obviousness", "industrial application" (or "utility") and sufficiency of disclosure.
In most countries, Examiners are high level employees with clerical staff working under their supervision in supporting roles. For example, in the Indian Patent Office, an entry level Examiner (official designation: Examiner of Patents & Designs) is a Group A (Class 1) gazetted officer. This is the highest post in the set-up of the Indian Government service.
On April 13, 2007, a "Coalition of Patent Examiner Representatives" expressed concern that
in many patent offices, the pressures on examiners to produce and methods of allocating work have reduced the capacity of examiners to provide the quality of examination the peoples of the world deserve the combined pressures of higher productivity demands, increasingly complex patent applications and an ever-expanding body of relevant patent and non-patent literature have reached such a level that, unless serious measures are taken, meaningful protection of intellectual property throughout the world may, itself, become history.According to Indian newspaper Mint, Indian patent examiners have the world's highest workload and lowest pay. While a patent examiner in the European Patent Office would handle less than seven patent applications per month and a USPTO examiner would handle eight applications per month, an Indian examiner reportedly handles at least 20 applications a month. However an Indian examiner’s monthly salary is less than a third of his/her counterparts in other foreign patent offices.
Read more about this topic: Patent Examiner
Famous quotes containing the word duties:
“Of what use the friendliest dispositions even, if there are no hours given to Friendship, if it is forever postponed to unimportant duties and relations? Friendship is first, Friendship last.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“What between the duties expected of one during one’s lifetime, and the duties exacted from one after one’s death, land has ceased to be either a profit or a pleasure. It gives one position, and prevents one from keeping it up. That’s all that can be said about land.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)
“He is asleep. He knows no longer the fatigue of the work of deciding, the work to finish. He sleeps, he has no longer to strain, to force himself, to require of himself that which he cannot do. He no longer bears the cross of that interior life which proscribes rest, distraction, weaknesshe sleeps and thinks no longer, he has no more duties or chores, no, no, and I, old and tired, oh! I envy that he sleeps and will soon die.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)