Request For Correcting Reports GAO-25-107214 And GAO-25-107218

The U.S.&nbsp; Government Accountability Office ("GAO") released reports GAO-25-107214 and GAO-25-107218 that contain several critical errors of analysis, omission, and biased conclusions that undermine their credibility.&nbsp; In order to restore GAO's appearance of impartiality, objectivity and credibility, the GAO is requested to correct these reports as further identified and described herein.<br><br>GAO-25-107218. The `218 Report contains two separate basic errors that defeat its conclusions and undermine several of its recommendations. First, the `218 Report is erroneously concerned with patent invalidation rates in district courts and in trial proceedings at the PTAB as a comparative measure of USPTO examination compliance rate. However, such patent invalidity rates found in adjudication are <i>necessarily</i> around the 50 percent level, inherent to cases selected for litigation—not to the underlying validity rate of the stock of <i>all</i> issued patents in force. Contrary to the `218 Report’s notions, these invalidation rates are unique to patents that are <i>adjudicated</i> <i>only</i> where the parties diverge in their view of the likely outcome in “close calls.” These invalidation rates are therefore <i>irrelevant</i> as measures of USPTO examination non-compliance rates or the “quality” of <i>all</i> issued patents. As evidence shows, the `218 Report erroneously implies that the USPTO examination non-compliance rate is higher than actual.<br><br>Second, the `218 Report’s treatment of patent examination non-compliance focuses solely on erroneous <i>allowance</i> of patent applications. It thus ignores, and does not account for Final Rejection errors—the examiners’ <i>erroneous rejection</i> of applications for patentable inventions <i>that should, but do not become patents</i>. The report is silent on this type of errors and is therefore biased against patents by treating allowance errors <i>as the sole measure of examination quality.</i> The hallmark of this bias throughout the `218 Report is its use of the term “<i>patent</i> quality,” instead of the correct term “<i>examination</i> quality”—a term unbiased between allowance <i>and</i> rejection errors. The latter correctly identifies the quality problem: the problem is <i>examination</i>—not <i>patents.<br><br>GAO-25-107214. The `214 Report takes up the issue of third party funding of patent litigation and usefully brings into focus certain industry concerns from both sides about the process. However, the report appears biased against enforcement of patent rights in several ways. First, it adopts the erroneous notion, later bolstered in the `218 Report, that the high patent invalidation rate at the PTAB is indicative of the “low quality patents” asserted by patent owners. It alleges without proof a counterfactual that “hundreds or thousands of patents” the USPTO issues on “5G wireless” technologies are essentially <i>unpatentable</i>, of which many are asserted in litigation.<br><br>Second, the `214 Report takes the one-sided position that third-party litigation funders support litigation of such “low quality patents,” needlessly harming accused infringers. The report gives only an example where such litigated patents were later ruled invalid; it is silent on counter examples of cases where the patents were upheld and found infringed. The `214 Report conspicuously gave no account of the salutary role of third-party litigation funders in protecting patent rights from predatory infringement, as exemplified below.&nbsp;</i>