Ousourcing Patent Serches

Publishing Technology News: "Wednesday, March 10 Quality Assured Patents The US government has approved a bill that allows outsourcing of prior art searches as part of the patent examination process - sounds like a good idea? I don't think so. The bill stipulates that the maximum that can be paid for searches is $500 and that small companies should be favored when placing the searches (US companies/nationals only need apply). So we're likely to have a raft of new patents granted whilst the patent examiners figure out who can do decent searches and the quality is likely to be even more erratic than it has been to date. Rather than go through all this, why not just require that patent attorneys ensure, to the best of their determination, that patent applications are novel? I do not believe this happens at the moment; doing so would greatly reduce the burden placed on patent examiners and shift some of the costs of the search filtering onto those applying for patents. "