Every gene sequence that theU.S. Patent and Trademark Of-fice receives must be checked

for novelty and obviousness. The PTO

uses two massive parallel-processingcomputers that compare the sequencesagainst five databases; this electronicsearch is then evaluated by an examinerand, often, a senior examiner. All fairlystraightforward.

The problem is that to do this thePTO needs tens of millions of dollars and100 years—and that’s just to review thepending patents. According to John Doll,head of the PTO group that handlesgene patents, it takes about 65 hours and$5,000 to examine a batch of 100 se-quences. But the application fee is onlyabout $800, and some applicants, in-cluding Incyte Pharmaceuticals in PaloAlto, Calif., and Human Genome Sci-ences in Rockville, Md., submit thou-sands of sequences in an application.As equipment becomes more powerfuland automated analysis enables sequenc-es to be tested more quickly for poten-tial pharmaceutical uses, even more ap-plications will be submitted.

In April the PTO held hearings on thiscrisis in La Jolla, Calif., and Arlington,Va. Commissioner Bruce A. Lehmanand attendees suggested possible reme-dies: raising application fees, bringingin additional examiners or seeking as-sistance from other agencies. Industryrepresentatives testified that part of thedifficulty is that the PTO is doing exces-sive sequence analysis and that its data-bases have redundant sequences thatslow down analysis.

A similar muddle is slowing down an-other division of the PTO as well. Whena software idea is submitted, it has tobe compared with more than a million“prior art” items from the past 30 years.(Prior art is any earlier patent, journalarticle, book or news story that antici-pates the invention.) Examiners have yetto be provided access to the databasesand tools they need. The Patent Officeseems to be suffering from too much ofa new thing. —Gregory Aharonian

News and Analysis Scientific American August 1996 33

TOO MUCH

FOR TOO LITTLE

The Patent Office is swamped with gene sequences it can’t

afford to check

PATENTS

W ith just a tap of your finger, imagine unlocking your house, withdrawingmoney from your bank account or even shopping. It may seem like a fu-

turist fantasy, but electronic fingerprint identification can no longer be relegat-ed to the realm of science fiction.

Although the technology has been in the works for a few years—and NewYork City–area airports have used it on a limited scale since 1994—it is finallybecoming widespread. This past April the New York City police department con-tracted with two companies specializing in biometric security systems—MOR-PHO Systems and Identix—to install a fingerprint identification system. Now anofficer will be able to scan a suspect’s fingerprints into a database, take a digi-tized mug shot, type in other details and then electronically send the entirepackage to headquarters. The system is expected to be more accurate thancurrent paperwork procedures, sparing police thousands of hours.

Other government agencies have already jumped on the electronic identifica-tion bandwagon, and many state so-cial services departments, includingthose in New York, New Jersey andConnecticut, have such systems foridentifying welfare recipients. (Todate, for instance, New York’s SuffolkCounty has documented saving morethan $1 million, mostly by blockingfalse claims.)

The technology works by photo-graphing the swirls and whorls of eachfingertip. A computer tabulates andrecords the locations of specific ridg-es, indentations and patterns knownto be unique to each person. Identixreports that its scanning equipmentis nearly 100 percent effective inmatching the right person with theright fingerprint—but the computerhas also rejected a correct match 3percent of the time. (The chance ofany two people having the identicalfingerprint is estimated to be lessthan one in a billion.) If the technologykeeps reaching wider and wider audi-ences, you, too, may soon be askedfor your hand. —Gunjan Sinha

IMAGING TECHNOLOGY

The Right Touch

With grand fanfare, the elec-tronics giant Texas Instru-ments announced in May

that it had perfected a process that canproduce silicon microchips of far greaterdetail and complexity than any currentlyavailable. Newspapers widely marveled

at the innovation; many pointed outthat TI is the first to produce chips withfeatures as small as 0.18 micron (mil-lionths of a meter) wide. Some predict-ed that the microchips would launch ageneration of wonderfully smart andcompact contraptions.

Such reports were wrong on twocounts, but correct on the third. TI wasnot first. Although that company hasprototypes on hand and hopes to havea factory constructed by next year, IBMbegan shipping small quantities of equal-ly detailed integrated circuits in May.And both TI’s and IBM’s processes cre-ate tiny transistors that are 0.25, not0.18, micron in width. (The much mis-

ONE SMALL STEP

The next big advance in chip design

arrives one year early

SEMICONDUCTORS

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Copyright 1996 Scientific American, Inc.