They are not providing competent representation which is the very basis on which bar associations are founded. I understand your cynicism but can not share it and also have any hope of a reasonable outcome to this game being played. If the rules cannot change and they want to continue to milk the cow without killing it, they need to reel in the bad actors. They have the authority and moral imperative to do so.

The patent cited in [0] was filed in 2000, rejected and resubmitted multiple times with minor modifications over the course of 5 years until they found an examiner to accept it. It was a not insignificant patent and has been used recently in a very important case every reader of hn followed.

This application was a continuation of U.S. application Ser. No. 11/000,413, filed on Dec. 1, 2004, which was a continuation of U.S. application Ser. No. 09/478,009, filed on Jan. 5, 2000, now U.S. Pat. No. 6,847,959, issued Jan. 25, 2005.

Sorry it wasn't clear, there is no good way I know to "diff" or show you the history provided by the uspto interface. There may be better secondary sources, I know at least one nytimes journalist was asking questions about it.

What's incompetent about that representation? And also, there's nothing at all unusual about filing continuations. I'm not gonna try to dig into the file history on my phone, but I'd be surprised if there's anything at all remarkable about this case--amendments, continuations, and (presumably) RCEs are absolutely par for the course.