APPLICATION OF 6-SIGMA TO PATENT APPLICATIONS:
This is another reason to check the quality of the electronic
documents generated by the patent applications we draft.
"6-Sigma is the highest quality level of the "Sigma" system, which
sets forth the acceptable number of Defective Parts Per Million Operations
(DPMO).
Sigma Level / DPMO
6 Sigma / 3.4
5 Sigma / 233
4 Sigma / 6,210
3 Sigma / 66,807
2 Sigma / 308,537
But what does all this have to do with patent quality - or the implied
"poor" quality of patent data?
While it's rather easy to count the number of defective plastic parts
being produced by a molding machine, it's a little more difficult to count
the errors in patent data.
There are currently about 2.5 million active US patents - all of them
available in digital form, so they are searchable on various commercial
and government databases. Other authorities, such as the European Patent
Office, WIPO, and others similarly contain most of the active patents
searchable in digital form.
At 6-Sigma quality, there would be about 8.5 total patent data errors in a
database containing US patents. However, at 4 Sigma, there would be
roughly 8,000 patents containing errors. Other patent issuing authorities
fare about the same.
The primary cause of these digital errors can be traced back to the
quality of the OCR scanning technology employed to convert paper patent
documents to digital files. Therefore, it is more a matter of "technology
employed" than mismanagement of patent data. In fact, in most countries,
there are not legislative requirements to keep digital patent data
accurate - only the paper files. So the digital files are made publicly
available more as a convenience to society. Consequently, there is no
pressing need to ensure quality patent data ... and unfortunately, it's
obvious."
This comes from Patent Cafe.
7:29:54 PM 
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