@smowry I think you are painting a picture of patent offices that is a bit one sided and totally exaggerated.
Firstly, to compare patent offices or salesmen with pedofiles, well, let's not go there. I mean, if your position is that they should have been able to do a better job, then you should also be able to explain this a bit better than comparing them with sexual offenders. So let's just live that path forever.
What I really want to touch on instead is a couple of concepts in searching for prior art. For example, two patents may have identical drawings, but one describes the use of the physical implementation differently. The first patent would then be a prior art reference to the second patent, and it would be up to the attourney and the clerk to discuss how this patent would be sufficiently different from the first patent to qualify as an individual patent. For example within loudspeakers, there are two parties discussing, without in depth knowledge of loudspeakers. It will be up to the two to interpret how the first patent can be read, and whether it had the scenario described in the second patent in mind and described it sufficiently to also cover that.
But long before we get here, we also have a situation where an engineer, not a brilliant one apparently, thinks he/she has come up with something that might be enough for a patent. The right thing to do for them would be to do a pre search before they even contact the patent attorney office. I would be surprised if you have not searched through patents a number of times, and you have then also found lots of patents that are either totally irrelevant, or looks really relevant but turns out to be something completely different. Then you search a round 2, 3 and 4, and in all rounds, new patents shows up that you did not find in the prior rounds. How many rounds are enough? And what about everything that is not fully disclosed? I mean, there are tons of things that are out there, but not patented or fully disclosed.
If you start searching USPTO for free energy devices, you will find something interesting. There are tons of patents out there that does not state to be free energy devices, but that are clearly on this path, and that does not work. But the explaination to why the patent does not work may not be that obvious. In most cases it would be fare above the head of the patent office to understand what the device could actually be used for as this is not directly disclosed. One example could be a thermodynamic cooling device to support other thermodynamic processes. The device itself could work, and be a valid patent, but with a bit of understanding you would also know that the patent does not contain any calculations to the energy consumption, and that is the part making the patent completely useless.
But the patent is still valid, and even if the patent office has seen the catch, and even told the inventor, he/she may still be convinced and wants the patent anyway. I mean, which inventor does not look at him/her self as a brilliant thinker?
We have the same situation with patents that are too much based on prior art. You are required to refer to prior related patents, and through searches you will be ordered by the patent office to show certain patents and explain how they differ from your new invention. You often end up with an extremely small detail, like using a particular formula to calculate the roundover on a bass port tube, or making a tiny shorting ring in a particular place in the motor for a very specific reason. You would have to show countless patents of prior art showing shorting rings and explain how this differs. Questions that needs answering would be things like "does this make a difference to the final product?" and "is this outside of what the prior patent covers?".
I could post a cut section of our 15 inch woofer motor, and anyone could make the same driver with the same performance, but very few, if any, would understand how it differs from any other typical over hung motor design. They could see it on measurements, off course, but you would not see it just by looking. I could off course, apply for a patent on a certain detail, claiming some kind of benefit. It could cover what is interesting for me, without me having to reveal the actual purpose. It would certainly look like something quite useless and very prior art, but it would still be easy to pick one or two details that are unique enough to grant me a patent. Any patent attourney or patent clerk would probably never see this as something of value.
And then it is the availability of prior art documents. I mean, firstly, the Børresen patent is not identical to your design. It is an obvious "next step" but also quite different as it does use two sort of low reluctance return path motors stacked. Did you ever mention this in your article? While the Harman patent is available, your documents are mainly on your own server as far as I know. I have browsed it many years ago, but it is hardly counting as "published" in the way we normally think of the word in the scientific world.
I am not trying to discredit you here. I think it is nice to see all the fun stuff you have done over the years. But you are attacking someone here. Your basis of attacking them is a patent that is not that similar to your work, while that is your claim. At the same time, they do sell a network switch for 10k+ USD that contains an off the shelf 30 USD switch in an MDF box with a PCB that is not connected to anything. They sell "vibration damping" that has no compliance. They sell super expensive garbage cables, really poor speakers costing hundreds of thousands of USD, amps based on several generations old off the shelf cheap technology at a premium price...
Have you actually found that this patent is identical to prior art?
