KOL454 | Interview with my Patent Mentor, Bill Norvell, about Patent Law and Our Days Together

by Stephan Kinsella on March 10, 2025

Podcast (kinsella-on-liberty): Play in new window | Download (Duration: 1:32:26 — 84.2MB)

Kinsella on Liberty Podcast: Episode 454.

I interviewed/had a discussion with my first IP law boss today, William C. (Bill) Norvell, Jr., about our time together when I was a new lawyer, his love of opera and so on, and his views on politics, war, Trump, and his views on the patent and IP system based on his years of experience as a patent prosecutor and patent ligitator. Bill, previously a parter with my former firm Jackson Walker, is now retired from Akerman.

He was unable to connect via video on our Zoom call so his part is audio only.

I’ve mentioned before there are very few anti-patent IP attorneys (see Pro-IP “Anarchists” and anti-IP Patent Attorneys). It turns out Bill, the guy who taught me patent law, is mostly of that sentiment. In response to my question about whether abolishing the patent system would mean the end of innovation and inventions, go to about 1:26:00, for this interchange:

Kinsella:

If the patent system disappeared tomorrow, do you think this this would mean that innovation would stop?

Norvell:

No, absolutely not. I think it’s in the mind in the civilized man and woman mind to move forward and advance society, and we’ve done this since the caveman and the development of fire and the wheel and so forth. Absolutely not. I think the people that I have known and worked with in my career had brilliant minds; they were creative people people, and they didn’t they didn’t really didn’t give a damn about the patents. You know another point on this, and in direct answer to your question, is that patents are are applications a lot of times are approved to be pursued in corporations to be “warm fuzzies” for engineers and designers and so forth—”oh this man has three patents etc etc etc”—and there’s there’s not any care about about protectionism and going into the market and so forth. Mankind, in our entire society, the development of the Industrial Revolution, the evolution of that, is in the in the genes, so to speak, of humanity. I don’t think it would affect it a bit.

I am reminded of the words of an email to me from a patent attorney (Miracle–An Honest Patent Attorney!):

Stephan,

Your letter responding to Joe Hosteny’s comments on Patent Trolls nicely states what I came to realize several years ago, namely, it is unclear that the U.S. Patent System, as currently implemented, necessarily benefits society as a whole. Certainly, it has benefited [Hostey] and his [partners] and several of their prominent clients, and has put Marshall, Texas on the map; but you really have to wonder if the “tax” placed on industry by the System (and its use of juries or lay judges to make the call on often highly complex technical issues that the parties’ technical experts cannot agree on) is really worth it.

Of course, anyone can point to a few start-up companies that, arguably, owe their successes to their patent portfolios; but over the last 35 years, I have observed what would appear to be an ever increasing number of meritless patents, issued by an understaffed and talent-challenged PTO examining group, being used to extract tribute from whole industries.

I have had this discussion with a number of clients, including Asian clients, who have been forced to accept our Patent System and the “taxes” it imposes on them as the cost of doing business in the USA.

I wish I had the “answer”. I don’t. But going to real opposition proceedings, special patent courts with trained patent judges, “loser pays attorney fees” trials, retired engineers/scientists or other experienced engineers/scientists being used to examine applications in their fields of expertise by telecommuting from their homes or local offices throughout the Country, litigating patent attorneys providing regular lectures to the PTO examiners on problems encountered in patent infringement cases due to ineffective or careless examination of patent applications, and the appointment of actually qualified patent judges to the CAFC, may be steps in the right direction.

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