Patently Absurd

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Whatever the eBay verdict, the patent office looks overwhelmed. It received a stunning 409,532 applications in its 2005 fiscal year, up from around 126,000 in 1985. Examiners average just 19.7 hours per application. None of this is news to Jon Dudas, director of the office, who admits that his staff can't keep up. "It's not that we're taking longer," he says, "but the line just gets longer out the door." In January Dudas announced steps to streamline the process and hire more examiners.

That helps the bureaucracy, but it won't end the patent arms race. "Companies know that it's easier to get patents and that patent protection is more powerful than it was in the past," says Harvard Business School professor Josh Lerner. Microsoft alone filed 3,000 patents in 2004. Which is fine, say experts like Lerner. The problem is that companies also file patents defensively, to stymie competition. "There are large firms that used to be big innovators, but no more," he says. Those large firms, he says, aren't much different from small-time trolls.

Woolston, for his part, vows to fight eBay regardless of the Supreme Court verdict. One of his rejected patents was reinstated on appeal, he says, and he plans to sue eBay again. An eBay spokesman says the company has a workaround should Woolston get an injunction. Suffice it to say, this is one patent war that won't end soon.