Patent Office Says Quality-Control Measures Aren’t Weaponization

The US Patent and Trademark Office denied in a brief that a recent quality-control study focused on sprawling patent families was the return of a shuttered once-secret program that had become a lightning rod for inventor criticism.

The PTO’s filing Wednesday in DC federal court came in response to Nevada inventor Gilbert Hyatt’s motion to reopen discovery in his proposed class action over the agency’s Sensitive Application Warning System, under which patent examiners were instructed to internally flag patent applications for additional attention when they appeared frivolous.

Hyatt sued on the theory his patent applications were unfairly flagged for scrutiny ...