>I'd say that depends on how many people get fired. If the effort to throw them out persists, the patent office will change.
Makes you wonder when someone will throw up a crowd-sourcing website that tracks patent examiners where people can submit/link to questionable patents they awarded and upvote/down vote to get some kind of consensus. I also wonder if people would really care enough to take part in something like that.
I agree that it's very interesting, and its probably very telling as to the group of people that is probably going to be best equipped to addressing the problem without having to hack away at traditional means that have thus proven themselves highly ineffective/slow moving at this point.
I think that means there is probably going to be a subset of that audience that would participate in something like that but with more focus on individuals and pressuring the patent office to act through some means (email,tax,phone calls, transparency on a systemic issue with some data). I guess this could be a spin on civic engagement.
Makes you wonder when someone will throw up a crowd-sourcing website that tracks patent examiners where people can submit/link to questionable patents they awarded and upvote/down vote to get some kind of consensus. I also wonder if people would really care enough to take part in something like that.