Inventor still battling U.S. over patents from ’70s

“Gilbert Hyatt said the more he fought and appealed other patents, the longer officials dragged out his applications. R. Polk Wagner, a patent law professor at the University of Pennsylvania, said some patent applications can be slowed during a review of how an invention affects national security. But he acknowledged that 40 years was an unusually long review period on any case. ‘In my experience, the Patent and Trademark Office has every incentive to process applications quickly,’ Wagner said. ‘The trick for the PTO is to process them as quickly as they can while being accurate. There is certainly no incentive for this significant kind of delay.'”

http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2014/03/23/inventor-battling-us-over-patents-sought-in-1970s/6792451/