US Patent Office Teams With Google On Database 82
PatPending writes "The Patent and Trademark Office announced it has reached a two-year 'no-cost' agreement with Google to make patent and trademark data electronically available and free to the public. From the article: 'Saying it lacks the technical capacity to offer such a service, PTO said the two-year agreement with Google is a temporary solution while the agency seeks a contractor to build a database that would allow the public to access such information in electronic machine-readable bulk form.'"
Re:By lacks technical capability they really mean. (Score:1, Interesting)
It's funny, but it's true.
What will happen if someone tries to troll the patent office once this final contractor job is done? I could see someone sticking the patent office with an "on the web" suit if this thing is supposed to be accessible to the public.
Maybe, then, we'll get some real reform.
Re:Honestly (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes, because we want an international private business controlling who can see the patent office.
Remember the very recent break in at google by Chinese agents working against their human rights movement [slashdot.org]? Yes, let's set up a situation where we could hand over all of our patents to the very lax IP enforcement of china.
THis is kind of stupid (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Don't you know that contractors are always bett (Score:3, Interesting)
I have lots of reasons to hate Bush and the problems that hit my agency while he was Prez are, actually, fairly low on that list. He screwed up lots of other things, too. And "hate" is too strong a word, implying a personal animosity that doesn't exist in this case. I just think he was a lousy president.
As for it all starting under Clinton, I'll take your word for it. After Clinton personally (I repeat: *personally*) killed a project I was peripherally involved with, I never had much use for the guy. You know you've pissed off someone up high when an executive in your agency walks into the group, calls everybody into a meeting, tells everybody to cease all work without even returning pending phone calls, and orders that all records be shredded starting the instant the meeting ends. :-)
So if you say Clinton started it, I'll go along with that. You must admit, though, that the process accelerated and the attitude toward government employees truly went into the crapper under Bush, right?
Google Needs to Do this for More Public Data (Score:3, Interesting)
They really need to hit these pay-wall for public information businesses hard. I am tired of paying Thompson-West $250/Month for access to cases that my own tax dollars paid for. If they can monetize the process with advertising, the government can get a cut, and the whole process could end up actually saving tax payers money. Maybe the PTO can hire a few more people.
Re:Don't you know that contractors are always bett (Score:3, Interesting)
You make a good point. I've seen several situation like you describe, as well as variations thereof.
Anecdote: A friend of mine retired a while back. He was incredibly stressed and overworked. He was extremely competent and hardworking, but the crushing workload eventually wore him out. He'd been asking for help for years.
He was a GS 11. When he retired, management put a new person in the job, tried that for a while, then re-assessed the situation. When all was said and done, that single GS 11 employee was eventually replaced by two GS 12s and three GS 7s.
My point? In government service, like anywhere else, sometimes it doesn't pay to be as good as you can be. You'll just get worked to death by an uncaring management that displays (as in your situation) a lamentable set of attitudes toward their own people. Even so, there are good and lousy employees in every organization and making assumptions about the competence of people based on whether they work in the public or private sector is never smart. You just can't tell.