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Raising examination standards

(Note: Risks of supporting partial solutions)

When people talk about patent reform, they are usually referring to proposals to raise examination standards by making the criteria stricter or tougher, and increasing the resources available to patent examiners.

The result would be to reduce the number of software patents granted. This would be helpful, but it wouldn't solve the problem. It only takes one software patent to destroy a small business or ruin an interoperability standard.

When encouraging the raising of patent examination standards, it's very important that your work is not misunderstood as showing support for "high quality" software patents. Always phrase your support like: "Raising the standards is a step in the right direction, but even 'high quality' software patents are harmful to society. The right thing to do is get rid of software patents entirely".

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