Patent on a Donut? Of Course Not

By: Mark R. Malek

This is a slight departure from our sometimes informational posts.  When I was watching TV the other night, however, I accidentally saw a Dunkin Donuts commercial.  I say accidentally because I can’t remember the last time that I actually saw a commercial (besides the Super Bowl – oops, I mean The Big Game – please don’t sue me NFL).  I generally record any show that I want to watch using a DVR, which is standard in any house nowadays.  The trick is trying to find time to watch the shows that I like.

Back to the matter at hand, even when commercials are on, I generally try not to pay attention to them.  This is very easy for me because I have the attention span of a two year old.  For those of you that do not have kids, translation – no attention span and easily distracted!  I happened to look up just long enough to see the commercial below:

As you can see, the commercial depicts a Dunkin Donuts employee bringing a plate of donuts into the “Patent Office” and announce that Dunkin Donuts has re-invented the chocolate donut. What appears to be a Patent Examiner simply stamps a piece of paper and hands it to the Dunkin Donuts employee. That just made me chuckle. If that is what the public thinks, then how can there possibly be a backlog of over 700,000 patent applications? If all the Patent Examiner does is eat a chocolate donut and allow a patent with the punch of a stamp, then every single application I file will now be accompanied by a box of donuts and an ink refill cartridge for the magic “patent stamp.”  Is the Patent Examiner now to be the butt of donut jokes? Has the Patent Examiner taken the place of the proverbial “cop” in the donut jokes?

Of course not. Most everyone understands that a patent application is not a form that is filled out and stamped by a Examiner. Instead, these are very detailed documents with complicated claims that are excruciatingly analyzed by Examiners in Washington (and soon also in Detroit – see my article here). The patent application process is not a short one, but the end results can be very valuable.

Well, I found some entertainment value in the Dunkin Donuts commercial, and I hope that Patent Examiners are not offended by the commercial. It certainly will never be as easy as depicted in the commercial to obtain something as valuable as a US Patent, but I am hoping that the various measures being taken by the management of the Patent Office will streamline the process and chip away at the backlog.