It appears that "things happen" in the US Patent Office, (PTO) once a patent application is allowed by the examiner(s) and leaves the examining group.

It might be that the administrative bureaucracy of the PTO are just emulating the "high ethical and moral standards" found in the Commerce Department's top echelons, - [which are] illuminated from time to time in recent years by the news media.

Vested interests most likely to be effected detrimentally by substantial new inventions likely have a substantial "political presence" at the Commerce Department.

If, in the days when Edison, Bell etc., filed for their industry founding patents, the candle manufactures, coal oil, kerosene and natural gas suppliers et al, had as effective an influence in the federal government as vested interests seem to have today, would we be using electric lights today?

Would we even be using electricity?

A ludicrous questions?

I think not.

Not if you appreciate how very tenuous and chancy were the very first steps and choices made by many inventors (and their backers) whose efforts have culminated in new industries.

Perhaps, the destruction or "suppression" of new technologies based on patents originated by private U.S. citizens and the resultant loss of new industries and the new jobs they would have created in the U.S. would diminish greatly, if the PTO where affiliated with the Department of Justice rather then the Department of Commerce.

Perhaps moving the PTO facilities from the Washington D.C. area, with its very high crime rate and even higher density of economic and political wheeler-dealers, to a more pristine region of the country such as Arizona or New Mexico might greatly improve the health of the U.S. patent processes and therefore the country's economic health.

Located in the D.C. area, the PTO is in competition with various military, intelligence, and other government operations along with a multitude of industrial-military complex enterprises for the area's available security resources and is likely at the bottom of the priority barrel for those resources.

It wouldn't surprise me to hear that one or more members of D.C.'s nefarious espionage industry uses the PTO for laboratory work in "An introductory course to industrial espionage"  for its new employee-trainees.

At a location in states such as Arizona or New Mexico, the PTO would be one of the region's largest enterprises and as such, it would likely have the very top priority for security, not only with the local federal constabulary but also with state and local police agencies.

In the days of Edison and Bell, poverty and the reasonable opportunity to become wealthy through application of their inventive skills were the major motivations behind many inventors' endeavors.

Today, the PTO is run like a big business and the very fees charged for patent fillings, patent maintenance, etc. no longer permit low income creative individuals this venue of expression and economic reward.

But of course this is reasonable.

A big business now, the PTO will want to protect its big business cronies.

After all, one hand washes the other.

Or should it be, one hand dirties the other?

Wouldn't want some poor upstart to upstage one of its big business cronies with a new technology now would it ?