Resources are finite.
Greg Reilly 20, Assistant Professor of Law, Chicago-Kent College of Law, 2020, “The Complicated Relationship of Patent Examination and Invalidation,” American University Law Review, https://aulawreview.org/blog/the-complicated-relationship-of-patent-examination-and-invalidation/, oj
Most commonly, the Patent Office’s examination problems are attributed to the resource constraints faced by the Patent Office—finite resources, a high volume of patent applications, and difficulty hiring a large number of high-quality examiners.89 Examiners thus only have approximately twenty hours per application for all of the tasks of examination: reviewing the application, conducting a prior art search, comparing the prior art to the claimed invention, drafting one or more office actions, responding to the applicant’s arguments, evaluating any amendments, and potentially holding an interview with the applicant’s attorney.90 Even patent examiners acknowledge this amount of time is insufficient for a quality examination.91 Insufficient examination time is likely to generate patent grants for claimed inventions that fail the statutory criteria of patentability because the presumption of patentability means that the patent issues unless the examiner, within the time allotted, can establish and explain its unpatentability.92