The USPTO’s cover-up of the secret SAWS

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (“USPTO”) has attempted to cover-up the function and true purpose of its Sensitive Applications Warning System (“SAWS”), a "deep state" program that has attracted substantial interest since it came to light in late 2014.  SAWS has recently been a subject of 31 FOIA requests and PTO’s responses and replies to appeals on these requests.  This article exposes the detailed workings of the SAWS and shows that the USPTO’s narratives that the SAWS is a patent quality assurance program is fiction; it shows that instead, the SAWS is an agency-wide system that even reaches the Board of Appeals, that allows USPTO officials to secretly exercise powers with which they were never vested by law, enabling them to choose on a whim winners and losers at the USPTO.

1. The SAWS

In 1994, the USPTO established, and since then secretly operated, the Sensitive Applications Warning System (“SAWS”) for designating (“flagging”) applications it deemed “sensitive,” to “apprise various areas of the USPTO of the prosecution of patent applications that include sensitive subject matter.” (ECF No. 11-4, Huntington Decl., Exhibit 2-3 at B31).  The stated purpose of the program is “to help USPTO personnel in the Office of the Commissioner for Patents and the Office of Public Relations interact with the press about applications that may generate a high level of publicity.” (Id. at B32).  The operation of the SAWS program was set forth in “Management Guidelines” – a directive issued to all Patent Examining Group Directors from the Deputy Commissioner for Patent Operations (“Directive”). (Id. at B72-76).  The Directive prescribed flagging under SAWS patent applications “that, if issued, would potentially generate high publicity or would potentially have a strong impact in the patent community.” (Id. at B73, emphasis added).  Designating applications as SAWS applications is based on extra-statutory criteria that have no bearing on patentability including, for example, applications “which have old effective filing dates (pre 6/8/1995, i.e. pre-GATT) and claims of broad scope (submarines),” or applications “which have objectionable or derogatory subject matter in the specification and/or drawing(s).”  (Id. at B74).  Each examining Technology Center (“TC”) establishes a list of “both general Corps‑wide SAWS criteria as well as Technology Center-specific SAWS criteria” as bases for flagging applications under the SAWS. (Id. at 72).

Examiners recommend flagging specific applications under the SAWS, but it is Supervisory Patent Examiners (“SPE”s) (who do not themselves examine applications) that “are responsible for determining which applications proceed through the SAWS program.” (Id. at B73, emphasis added).  The bases for the SPE approval and notification alert to flag the application as SAWS is sent in “a short email … including a short explanation of why.” (Id. at B81).

The USPTO for decades kept the SAWS secret. It also instructed that the application “file shall not indicate it has been identified as a SAWS application” and that the “Office shall not notify Applicant or any other party that any particular application has been identified as a SAWS application.” (Id. at B44, emphasis in original).

“Flagging an identified SAWS application [ensures] that the case does not issue until the flag has been removed.” (Id. at B74).  Because an application flagged under SAWS cannot be issued, the USPTO also conceals from the applicant any examiner determination that it is allowable and the SAWS flag “will prevent a Notice of Allowance in the application from being mailed.” (Id. at B79).

Each TC establishes a TC SAWS Panel to further screen SAWS applications submitted to the panel and verify their designation as SAWS applications. (Id. at B75).  Under the TC SAWS guidance, “If a case is to be reported as SAWS, the following information should be included in an email report that should be forwarded to the TC SAWS Panel” including identifying elements of the application, a “short summary of technology,” and an “Impact Statement.” (Id. at B100-101). “The Impact Statement can be prepared by performing an Internet search … of the invention, the inventors, and owner or assignee. Such information may include, but is not limited to financially important subject matter (Is the stock of the invention’s owner publicly traded? Have there been press releases about the invention?), politically charged subject matter, and subject matter which may raise legal or ethical objections.” (Id. at B100).

The USPTO’s Patent Trials and Appeals Board (formerly the Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences) (the “Board”) comprises an independent panel of Administrative Patent Judges that “on written appeal of an applicant, review adverse [patentability] decisions of examiners upon applications for patents.” 35 U.S.C. § 6(b)(1).  For reasons the PTO never explained in its SAWS guidance, the SAWS information, the reasons for the flag, and the related SAWS Impact Statement are also secretly forwarded to the Board for all SAWS applications on appeal, “at the time the examiner's answer [to the appeal] is written.” (Id. at B79; see also Id. at B115; ECF No. 11-12, Huntington Decl., Exhibit 10; answer to Sen. Moran, September 5, 2014 (“TCs do notify the PTAB if an application on appeal is a SAWS application.”)).  The Board is thus informed (ex parte, off-the record, unbeknownst to the applicant) of the SAWS status of applications on appeal to the Board, even though this information should have no relevance to the Board’s decision on the examiner patentability rejections.  Yet, the Board’s Standard Operating Procedure (SOP-8) contains a section on SAWS which expressly requires “paying particular attention to the special [SAWS] issues raised by the TC.”

2. The SAWS procedures include neither patent “quality check” criteria nor any other criteria for removing the SAWS flag

The Directive and the TC SAWS guidance prescribe only two mechanisms for removing the SAWS flag from an application once it has been SAWS-flagged by the SPE: (a) through the TC SAWS Panel “screening mechanism to remove non-SAWS applications from their SAWS designation” based solely on “whether the application contains SAWS subject matter,” (ECF No. 11-4, Huntington Decl., Exhibit 2-3 at B75), or if (b) “the sensitive nature of the application has changed (i.e., Applicants elect non-sensitive subject matter, Applicants amend the claims to exclude sensitive subject matter)”  (Id. at B81).  Flagging an application under SAWS triggers no quality assurance process.  The SAWS procedures neither prescribe nor identify any patentability quality assurance step, certainly not one that, if taken or completed, would result in the removal of the SAWS flag.

Rather, any procedure for escalation of review to higher level officials at the USPTO was merely informational: the Directive explains that verified “SAWS cases will be brought to the attention of the TC Group Director. The Group Director will bring them to the attention of the Deputy Commissioner for Patent Operations and the Deputy Commissioner for Patent Examination Policy.” (Id. at B75, emphasis added).  Similarly, the TC SAWS guidance states: “[a]pplications identified and verified as containing SAWS material are reported to the Group Directors for transmittal to the Office of the Deputy Commissioner.” (Id. at B99, emphasis added).  Neither the Directive nor the TC SAWS guidance provide for, or requires, any decision to be made by those higher USPTO officials (on allowance, patent issuance or otherwise) with respect to a SAWS-flagged application or related Impact Statement.  Nor do the procedures provide that these officials find a basis for further patentability review.

The USPTO had no documented or affirmative procedures to remove the flag from verified SAWS applications within any time period after completion of its stated purpose – after “senior USPTO officials” have been “warned.”  It thus becomes clear that as internally constructed, the SAWS program procedures were designed to trap by default such applications in USPTO’s purgatory indefinitely.

Further, the record reflected no statutory, regulatory, or informal authority or framework for any PTO decision on an application that is informed by the application's SAWS status.  This is because no decision or action on an application can be taken pursuant to secret annotations or designations not shared in writing with the patent applicant. 37 C.F.R. § 1.2 (“The action of the [USPTO] will be based exclusively on the written record in the Office.”) (emphasis added).  According to the USPTO’s own explanation, the SAWS designation, as the acronym suggests, is merely an internal “warning,” “designed as an information gathering system to apprise various areas of the USPTO of the prosecution of patent applications that include sensitive subject matter.”  (ECF No. 11-4, Huntington Decl., Exhibit 2-3 at B-31 (emphasis added)).  The SAWS designation is simply designed to “help USPTO personnel in the Office of the Commissioner for Patents and the Office of Public Relations interact with the press about applications that may generate a high level of publicity.” (Id. at B-32, emphasis added).  Examination and allowance of applications are totally independent of SAWS designation, as the SAWS Report is normally prepared at the time of allowance. (ECF No. 11-4, Huntington Decl., Exhibit 2-3 at B-83).  “The intent is to minimize any direct impact on the examination process.” (Id., at B-92).  In conclusion, the SAWS had nothing to do with examination of an application on its patentability merits.

3. The PTO misled Congress by stating that an application flagged under SAWS can be issued

In response to a detailed inquiry letter from Senator Jerry Moran (R-KS), the USPTO evaded the actual question by misleading the Senator with a false answer. The question (in bold) and the PTO’s answer in its September 5, 2014 response were as follows:

Except for the counterfactual circumstance where “the sensitive nature of the application has changed,” the USPTO identified no “people involved,” “factors considered,” nor any “procedures used to make a determination” to remove the flag from a verified SAWS application because no such procedures existed.  The USPTO’s answer that “an application flagged as a SAWS application can be issued” is false per se.  In attempting to support this false statement, the USPTO’s sophistry is that “SAWS designation does not prohibit the allowance of an application.”  But under the SAWS procedures, allowance of an application does not remove its SAWS flag and the flag prevents its issuance.

For example, Gilbert Hyatt’s `263 pre-GATT application that the USPTO admitted was flagged under SAWS is a case in point.  By 2003, this SAWS application had several allowed claims including those for which the Appeal Board had reversed the examiner’s rejections.  But the USPTO took no action on the merit since then (15 years) despite Mr. Hyatt’s repeated petitions for action. See Hyatt’s Mandamus Complaint, (pp. 62-68). Two months after Mr. Hyatt sued the USPTO in a mandamus action to compel the issuance of the allowed claims in the `263 application, the PTO finally acted.  But instead of issuing those claims, the USPTO reopened prosecution with an office action starting examination all over again. See Hyatt’s Opposition to USPTO’s Motion to Dismiss (p. 10).

Even paying the issue fees for allowed SAWS applications does not rescue them from PTO’s purgatory.  For example, four of Gilbert Hyatt’s pre-GATT applications that were allowed and for which he paid the issue fees were withdrawn from issuance while at the USPTO’s Printing Division. For years after the withdrawal, the USPTO had not acted on them despite repeated petitions by Mr. Hyatt to do so. These applications are still pending.  See Hyatt’s Mandamus Complaint, (pp. 14-16).

Had there actually been mechanisms or “procedures used to make a determination” to remove the SAWS flag from verified SAWS applications, the USPTO had a golden opportunity to identify them in answering Senator Moran’s direct question.  Alternatively, the USPTO could have explained that even though the SAWS procedures did not provide for removal of the flag from verified SAWS applications, a senior USPTO official could exercise some unspecified discretion to remove the flag from these applications after they were “reported to the Group Directors for transmittal to the Office of the Deputy Commissioner.”  But to do so would have required the USPTO to “come clean,” identify the “people involved,” and admit that there were no “factors considered” except those at the whim of such “people involved.”  The USPTO opted for neither alternative and instead evaded the question by materially misleading the Senator with a false answer.

4. The USPTO materially misled Congress and the Judiciary on the true function of the SAWS by denying that the Board of Appeals uses the SAWS information

In covering up the actual function of the SAWS, the USPTO could not explain why the Board of Appeals received the SAWS information pertaining to applications on appeal.  It could not explain why such SAWS information was relevant to the Board in considering examiner patentability rejections, so the USPTO decided to simply deny that such SAWS information is considered at the Board – a denial that belies the evidence later produced by the USPTO itself.

In response to a congressional committee’s direct question whether Board judges receive SAWS information, then Acting Director Michelle Lee provided a written answer on January 9, 2015 that materially misled Congress.  She contended that there was “no formal or official process to make [Board] judges aware that patent applications involved in appeals to which they are assigned are subject to the [SAWS].”  Of course, the whole secret SAWS was never “formal” nor “official,” but the SAWS information was “informally” passed to the Board nonetheless, as evidenced by the USPTO’s own records discussed in Section 1.

The USPTO’s material misrepresentation of the Board’s use of the SAWS information was not limited to Congress, as the USPTO attempted to mislead a federal court as well.  The USPTO’s declarant testified under oath in FOIA court proceedings that the Board’s Chief Judges “were not reasonably likely to have records responsive to [Huntington’s] FOIA requests,” and therefore their records and computers were not searched for SAWS-related material. (ECF No. 18-1, Suppl. Heaton Decl., ¶ 4).  The judge noted, however, that the USPTO’s evidence is “at odds with earlier emails submitted by Huntington that suggest that SAWS reports were in fact sent to the Board … and that the Board was to be alerted when an appeal involved a SAWS application.”  (Memorandum Opinion, ECF Doc.-20, at 20 (January 18, 2017)).

The judge ordered the USPTO to go back and search the Chief Judges’ records; the USPTO did so and turned over responsive records including Board members’ emails on SAWS and a copy of the Board’s Standard Operating Procedure (SOP-8) containing a section on SAWS which expressly requires “paying particular attention to the special [SAWS] issues raised by the TC.”

5. The USPTO “quality control” fiction is a cover-up for the lawless SAWS

Following the public revelations of the SAWS program and the congressional inquiries, the USPTO took steps to cover-up the actual function and effect of the SAWS. It materially misled the public, the courts, and the Congress, by mischaracterizing the SAWS as a “quality control” program.  In testifying during her Senate confirmation process, then Acting Director of the USPTO Michelle Lee submitted a written answer to a question on the legal authority on which the SAWS is predicated:

Michelle K. Lee responses to QFR, Hearings on Federal Appointments, before the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, 113th Cong. 2nd Sess., at 1130 (January 9, 2015) (emphasis added).  She answered another question by further adding:

Under the USPTO’s “quality check” narrative, Acting Director Lee even promised to (inexplicably) change course and publish the SAWS guidance:

After the USPTO had concealed the program from the public for decades and denied its use for withholding issuance of allowable applications for years, the USPTO now invoked the Bart Simpson defense: “I didn't do it. Nobody saw me do it. I promise not to do it again.”  The promise for above-board openness purporting SAWS to be “this quality assurance program,” was a transparent canard; none of the SAWS procedures involve any patentability quality control steps and, in any event, no description of the SAWS ever published in the MPEP as promised.  Acting Director Lee’s statement that an application flagged under SAWS is “flagged for such a quality assurance check” is simply made-up fiction – it is flagged for a totally different purpose and effect.  For example, no examination quality control process can reasonably require that SAWS information be sent to the Board for applications under appeal or interference; the Board has no role in performing examination quality assurance -- prosecution in such applications is closed.  See 37 C.F.R. § 1.114(b).

The USPTO’s statements in federal court also pushed the fictional “quality assurance” narrative. The USPTO’s declarant in a FOIA court case testified that inclusion in the SAWS could result in the application receiving an internal quality assurance check.  (ECF No. 14-4, Heaton Decl., ¶22, ECF No. 18-1, Supp. Heaton Decl.,¶¶ 8, 9.)  But that same USPTO’s declarant testified that a SAWS flag has nothing to do with an examiner’s patentability decision on issuance: “A SAWS application underwent the same type of examination procedure as any other patent applications and was held to the same substantive patentability standards.”  (ECF No. 18-1, Supp. Heaton Decl.,¶9).  And the SAWS procedures neither prescribe nor identify any additional patentability quality assurance review that is triggered when a SAWS application is flagged or allowed.

Nevertheless, the USPTO then doubled-down on its SAWS “quality assurance” fiction on March 2, 2015, when it announced that it was “retiring” the program:

Here, the USPTO carries its fictional “quality assurance” narrative for SAWS to levels that are facially so absurd as to insult the public’s intelligence.  First, the conditions under which “most applications are published eighteen months after submission, exposing them to public scrutiny” long existed since the publication provision of the American Inventors Protection Act of 1999 (AIPA) came into effect.  The PTO’s explanation that this is a reason to retire the program now is a non-sequitur.  This stated reason to retire the SAWS existed for 15 years – why then did the USPTO keep the SWAS during all these years?

Second, the USPTO’s posting indicated that it has conducted a review of the program, but it has not published the findings of its review.  As a result, the public cannot evaluate the sufficiency and thoroughness of USPTO’s review.  And the USPTO’s desperate attempt to put the “quality assurance” proverbial ‘lipstick on the SAWS pig’ by suggesting that the Office “will seek public input … on whether there were any quality-enhancing features of the SAWs program” is an ironic insult with a counterfactual.  The USPTO did not explain how the public could possibly provide such input when the program had been kept secret from the public.  And even when the details are discovered through FOIA litigation against the USPTO, it is plainly evident, as described above, that the SAWS had no “quality-enhancing features.”

6. The SAWS lacked the essential attributes of a genuine quality assurance process

The identification of SAWS applications was made “throughout the Patent Corps,” (ECF No. 11-4, Huntington Decl., Exhibit 2-3 at B-74) in a process that “is continual in nature and 100% of applications within the Technology Center are reviewed” for potential SAWS designation. Id. at B-100.  Yet, this all-encompassing scope of review had none of the attributes of a patent quality assurance process.

In 2008-2009, the Department of Commerce's Office of Inspector General (IG) audited the USPTO's quality assurance process at the request of the Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, and Science, U.S. Senate Committee on Appropriations.  The IG was asked to examine and report on “(1) effectiveness of USPTO's patent quality assurance process in ensuring that established standards are met for patent examination quality, and (2) whether PTO's patent quality assurance process complies with applicable [federal] laws, regulations, policies, procedures, and guidelines.”

Under the Inspector General Act of 1978 (as amended) the USPTO was to provide the IG with “access to all records, reports, audits, reviews, documents, papers, recommendations, or other material available … which relate to programs and operations” of the USPTO subject to the IG’s audit.  5 U.S.C. App. § 6(a)(1).  The IG audit report states that the USPTO provided access to its operating procedures, the quality assurance policies, procedures, and practices of TCs and the Office of Patent Quality Assurance (OPQA). It also facilitated interviews of USPTO officials and representatives from the Patent Office Professional Association (the patent examiners' union). See USPTO Patent Quality Assurance Process, Final Report No. OIG-II-006-I, p.2 (November 5, 2010).

The USPTO was therefore obligated under the IG Act of 1978 to disclose the patent quality assurance features of the SAWS program to the IG during the audit if Acting Director Lee’s statements were correct – if the “SAWS program is one such quality control effort.”  However, the IG audit did not include the SAWS among the quality control processes.  This omission was not only in the IG audit report of 2010 referred to above; none of the other quality assurance audits conducted by the IG during the life of the SAWS ever mentioned it. See Patent and Trademark Office – Patent Quality Controls Are Inadequate, Audit Report No. PTD-9977-7-0001 (September 1997); Status of USPTO Initiatives to Improve Patent Timeliness and Quality, Final Report No. OIG-11-032-I (September 29, 2011).

Nor was the SAWS mentioned or reviewed by a panel of academic experts who reviewed the quality assurance programs at the USPTO.  A detailed 11-page description of several quality assurance procedures at the USPTO makes no mention of the SAWS. See National Academy of Public Administration, U.S. Patent and Trademark Office: Transforming to Meet the Challenges of the 21st Century, (January 2006), pp. 61-71.

The USPTO’s own descriptions of its patent quality assurance processes also fail to make any reference to the SAWS.  Its presentation on the Patent Quality Assurance Program (2006) contains much detail but nothing on SAWS.  The USPTO’s detailed descriptions, including quality assurance process flow chart, provided as background for contractors for bidding on an expert study of its patent quality assurance programs makes no mention of the SAWS program.  See USPTO Request for Quote (RFQ), Patents Quality Management Program Assessment, DOC52PAPT0901007, (2009).

The inescapable conclusion is that, contrary to the USPTO’s narrative, the SAWS had nothing to do with quality assurance.  Had it been such a program, it would have been disclosed and reviewed as such.  A PTO violation of the IG Act of 1978 by concealing from the audit the “quality assurance features” of the SAWS appears far less plausible than the simple alternative explanation that the SAWS had no such features to be disclosed -- it was never a quality assurance program.

7. Any additional reviews of SAWS applications were mere pretext for recycling them in USPTO purgatory – not part of a “quality assurance” process

The notion that allowed applications flagged under SAWS were then subject to “additional quality review” belies actual events surrounding such allowed applications.  For example, the following is an email exchange between an examiner who allowed a SAWS application and his SPE:

The SPE responded:

Here, the SPE’s choice of words is instructive, given that the examiner did not identify the SAWS application involved.  Without having that detail of the application, the SPE nevertheless tells the examiner to misrepresent the facts and to tell the applicant that the application “appears to be going through some additional review.”  TC SAWS Specialist were not involved with a patentability quality review.

To be sure, allowed SAWS applications may have been subject to “additional review” after their return to examiners because they could not be issued.  But that “additional review” was not because someone found a specific identifiable allowance error.  Rather, it was mere pretext for recycling the SAWS application in USPTO’s purgatory.  Thus, the “quality” process for SAWS applications was turned on its head: from the normal quality assurance process wherein issuance is denied because an error is found, to one in which a search for an “error” is initiated because issuance is denied in the first place.

An example from Gilbert Hyatt’s pending applications is instructive because virtually all were flagged under SAWS (having met the pre-GATT broad claims criterion for SAWS).  For example, discovery in litigation revealed that in May 2002 an examiner informed an SPE that Mr. Hyatt was entitled to issuance of a patent on his `771 pre-GATT application:

The response of the SPE was redacted due to a protective order at USPTO’s request but it referred to the Office of the Deputy Commissioner for Patent Examination Policy – by inference, the “powers to be.”  But the USPTO did not act on the allowance decision and did not issue the application.  Instead, shortly thereafter, December 2002, the USPTO reopened prosecution in this application and restarted examination all over again.  See Hyatt’s Mandamus Complaint (p. 17).

The sequence of events in this `771 application shows that it underwent no “quality assurance check” any time during the “past several years” after it had been allowed.  During that time it was “ready for issue complete with that most ancient form of allowance a blue slip.”  That “most ancient form of allowance” indicates long delay with no action – not a “quality check.”  Instead, only when internal questions arose as to why it is not being issued “several years” after it had been allowed, the response was to continue to “hold up the issue,” but as a pretext, prosecution was reopened for “additional review.”  Now, 16 years later, this SAWS application is still pending.

8. Contrary to the USPTO’s assertion, the essential elements of the SAWS are still in operation and the system’s harm is irreparable

The USPTO proclaimed the “retirement” of the SAWS in a March 2, 2015 announcement on its website.  It provided no details on whether or how applications will be “unflagged,” nor what “retirement” means except to say: “Any applications currently in this program will now proceed through prosecution absent any additional SAWS-related processing.”  But applications that have been verified as SAWS, receive no “additional SAWS-related processing” – no “processing” is necessary for keeping an application in the SAWS status.  The record since March 2015 on every application known to have been flagged under SAWS shows no discernible difference in their treatment.  None of the allowances previously entered in these applications have been restored and none have issued.

For example, the USPTO has sat on Gilbert Hyatt’s `263 application with no action since 2003.  Nothing happened after the “retirement” of SAWS in March 2015 – the USPTO continued to sit on it for more than another 3 years until two months after Mr. Hyatt sued the USPTO in a mandamus action to compel the issuance of the allowed claims.  But instead of issuing those claims, the USPTO reopened prosecution with an office action starting examination all over again.  See Hyatt’s Opposition to USPTO’s Motion to Dismiss (p. 10).

Similar fate befell the other pending applications of Gilbert Hyatt, wherein the `771 application discussed above that was “on hold” never got “off hold” and is still pending notwithstanding the “retirement” of the SAWS.  And despite the “retirement” of the SAWS program, the USPTO continued to delay action on Mr. Hyatt’s `450 application filed in 1996 after the GATT deadline for patent term law change.  Because such post-GATT applications have a patent term of 20 years from filing regardless of when they issue, the USPTO ran the clock out on this application by providing no action on the merits since 2002.  By 2016, the application had no patent term left even if it were to issue. See Hyatt’s Mandamus Complaint (pp. 68-71).

As described in further detail in companion ACET post, Corliss Burandt did not fare any better on his pre-GATT application.  After withdrawing the allowance of his application in 2011 when the examiner admitted it was flagged under SAWS, the PTO did not restore the allowance after the “retirement” of the SAWS program.  Instead, the PTO issued a final rejection, accusing Mr. Burandt of prosecuting a “submarine” application.  He appealed.  The examiner’s answer had the hallmarks of SAWS recycling, wherein the examiner played a “shell game” by withdrawing rejections entered in prosecution and raising new grounds of rejection.  After further prosecution, a petition, and a decision on petition, the application is still pending.

The harm of the SAWS is irreparable even if no flagging occurs today.  Applications that were previously allowed but withheld from issue due to a SAWS flag when they were supposed to issue have been materially prejudiced.  They were delayed in USPTO purgatory for years and still stand rejected today under new patent law.  The delay for years and decades is highly prejudicial to such old applications because the USPTO now applies new patent law to reject applications that were written under practices and patent law environments of years past.

For example, patent claims that were allowed in 2003 by overcoming obviousness rejection under 35 U.S.C. § 103 by the use of the Teaching Suggestion Motivation (“TSM”) doctrine may now require different argumentation or substantial claim amendment because in 2007 the Supreme Court made it easier to find a patent invalid for obviousness in KSR Int’l Co. v. Teleflex, Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007). In KSR, the Court rejected the Federal Circuit’s “rigorous approach” of requiring at least one of the established indicia of obviousness—TSM to combine known elements. The Court removed the clarity of TSM by injecting other “several factors” with the circular definitions of “common sense” and “whether it would be obvious to try” – criteria that are prone to hind-sight subjective second-guessing of obviousness.  Following this decision, unbound by any objective standard, judges and patent examiners would proclaim obviousness by “common sense” and by circular arguments that the combination is “obvious” because it is “obvious to try.”

Nothing like the Supreme Court’s ambiguous jurisprudence on patent-eligible subject matter (the definition of the types of inventions that are protectable under patent law) that began after 2010 and culminated in the decision in Alice Corp. Pty. Ltd. v. CLS Bank Int’l, 134 S. Ct. 2347 (2014) could be more consequential for invalidating claims drafted decades ago.  It is easier now for examiners to find claims ineligible under 35 U.S.C. § 101 by showing under the second step of the Alice test that the claim limitations do not involve more than performance of “well-understood, routine, and conventional activities previously known to the industry.”

A patent specification drafted decades ago to support a claim under 35 U.S.C. § 112 may be insufficient to support such a claim today.  The Federal Circuit has explained that a specification cannot always support expansive claim language and satisfy the requirements of 35 U.S.C. § 112 “merely by clearly describing one embodiment of the thing claimed.” LizardTech v. Earth Resource Mapping, Inc., 424 F.3d 1336, 1346, (Fed. Cir. 2005).  In LizardTech, claims to a generic method of particular image processing were held invalid under 35 U.S.C. § 112, first paragraph, because the specification taught only one particular method for doing so, the court found no evidence that the specification contemplated a more generic method.  As a result, claims that can be obtained today may be narrower than those first allowed in a SAWS application that never issued.

Therefore, nothing in the USPTO’s purported “retirement” of the SAWS can salvage the applications once flagged under SAWS from peril.  Many applicants’ patent rights have been irreversibly impaired and nothing can remove the SAWS indelible “deep-state” scar on our patent system.

9. Conclusion

In conclusion, the SAWS is a system for withholding issuance of patentable claims and is not a “quality assurance” program.  While the SAWS may guarantee that no issuance errors occur in SAWS applications, it is only because the SAWS flag prevents issuance.  The USPTO created a “quality assurance” cover-up story to avoid accountability for this ultra virus system.  The SAWS allows USPTO officials to secretly exercise powers with which they were never vested by law to deny patents based on non-statutory criteria that the USPTO made up through self-help.  The SAWS thus allowed USPTO officials to choose winners and losers on a whim and has disproportionately targeted individual and small entity inventors.