Two things:
1) patents are granted for 20 years and design patents are granted for 15 years (used to be 14)
2) patents, the longer they are kept, get prohibitively expensive to maintain for the full aforementioned duration. The initial filing isn't too bad but each time it comes up for renewal, it gets more expensive.
Who profits? USPTO itself. It has thousands of patent lawyers and support staff. It also makes a tidy net profit off of the fees. The Clinton administration actually took 10% of USPTO profits and contributed it to the federal coffers.
USPTO also has a massive backlog of patents to process.
Agreed, the brief description misses an absolutely huge amount of the details. This is why I started with that disclaimer.
To expand:
Our current filing costs are listed here:
http://www.uspto.gov/learning-and-resources/fees-and-payment/uspto-fee-schedule
Please note that the fees are a few thousand dollars at most, chump change for a company with either Samsung or Nvidia's resources. Realistically, the lawyers are probably paid more for showing up in the court room (not arguing, simply showing up) than the patent costs.
The idiot's guide to patents can be found here:
http://www.uspto.gov/patents-getting-started/general-information-concerning-patents#heading-25
What I find most interesting is that a patent isn't worth the paper it's printed on until defended in court. For those unwilling to read through all of the above link:
"The exact nature of the right conferred must be carefully distinguished, and the key is in the words 'right to exclude' in the phrase just quoted. The patent does not grant the right to make, use, offer for sale or sell or import the invention but only grants the exclusive nature of the right. Any person is ordinarily free to make, use, offer for sale or sell or import anything he or she pleases, and a grant from the government is not necessary. The patent only grants the right to exclude others from making, using, offering for sale or selling or importing the invention. Since the patent does not grant the right to make, use, offer for sale, or sell, or import the invention, the patentee’s own right to do so is dependent upon the rights of others and whatever general laws might be applicable. A patentee, merely because he or she has received a patent for an invention, is not thereby authorized to make, use, offer for sale, or sell, or import the invention if doing so would violate any law."
And now the fun part. Patents currently last for 20 years, but have been increasing along with Copyright. Prior to 1995 patents offered 17 years of monopoly. Being real here, Disney throwing around their weight to change copyright law influences patent law. It's difficult to not see the URAA (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uruguay_Round_Agreements_Act) impacting patent law just as much as copyright. That's the point I'm trying to make, but thirty pages of legal text is asking for far too much reading from 99% of people. When Mickey is about to be put into the public domain again (in about 7 years) I'm betting both Copyright and Patent terms will be extended again, if not sooner (in response to concerns over China). An interesting synopsis can be found here:
http://artlawjournal.com/mickey-mouse-keeps-changing-copyright-law/
As to design patents, I don't see how they apply. It is an interesting example of the government being too lazy to fix their own documentation (the second link listed 14 years, but another link on the same site agrees with you
http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/mpep/s1505.html), but aesthetic design isn't up for discussion here. Even if it was, they'd have to prove aesthetics were a concern.
Let's also examine the performance of the USPTO (data from
http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/ac/ido/oeip/taf/us_stat.htm):
The USPTO has had a dramatic increase (about 500% in 30 years) in filings. They've increased issuance by about 200%. That means they're rejecting about 500% more patents (about 50,000 in 1984 and 300,000 in 2014).
I'm having problems digging up anything but yearly reports, but let's delve into the 2007 USPTO budget performance report (I use this year, because it's prior to the 2008 collapse and I can find the report:
http://www.uspto.gov/sites/default/...visory/reports/ppac_2007annualrpt.pdf#page=10).
The math here is simple. They took in 1.783 billion in revenue. They paid out 1.766 billion. That means their net profit for 2007 was 0.017 billion, or $17 million. $17 million is a joke. I'd be hard pressed to see where the USPTO is a profit making engine, as you seem to want to believe. What I see is a governmental body swamped in paperwork, willing to rubber stamp patents just to get them out the door. Heck, the linked article has pages dedicated to complaining about patent applications which are thousands of pages long.
What I see here is a broken system, that failed to evolve into the digital age. It is now dragging down the legal system, and it being attacked from both the copyright and patent monopolies. Nvidia and Samsung aren't evil or good, they're riding a sinking ship down to try and murder one another for a lifeboat position.
