> I mean, looking at this list makes it so obvious that something isn't right, that I don't understand how she can have a job.
Just reading the list gives you no useful information whatsoever about how well or how poorly she is doing her job. All the list has is the abstracts from the patents. A patent abstract is kind of like the blurb on the back of a book, or a trailer for a movie. They give you an overview of what the patent covers, but there will be innumerable ways to accomplish what the abstract describes without infringing the patent.
When you are looking at a list of patents to figure out if you might be infringing one of them, or to figure out if one of them describes a solution to a problem you are trying to find a solution for, the abstract is more of a tool for telling you which patents you can skip rather than what ones you need to take a deeper look at.
To see what the patent actually covers, you have to read the claims. However, the claims are interpreted in light of the specification, so you have to read that, too. A claim may appear to be quite broad, but the discussion in the specification might limit general terms in the claim to very specific values or meanings. In most cases, a patent is not something you can just sit down and quickly understand, even if you are an expert in the field the patent is in.
Even this is not always enough. You should also read the "file wrapper" for the patent. That's the collection of documentation generated during the processing of the patent application. It will include things like the examiner's prior art search results, initial rejections of claims, the letters from the application trying to persuade the examiner to change their mind about rejected claims, answers to questions from the examiner, and stuff like that. You can get the file wrapper online through the "Patent Application Information Retrieval" (PAIR) interface [1].
Just reading the list gives you no useful information whatsoever about how well or how poorly she is doing her job. All the list has is the abstracts from the patents. A patent abstract is kind of like the blurb on the back of a book, or a trailer for a movie. They give you an overview of what the patent covers, but there will be innumerable ways to accomplish what the abstract describes without infringing the patent.
When you are looking at a list of patents to figure out if you might be infringing one of them, or to figure out if one of them describes a solution to a problem you are trying to find a solution for, the abstract is more of a tool for telling you which patents you can skip rather than what ones you need to take a deeper look at.
To see what the patent actually covers, you have to read the claims. However, the claims are interpreted in light of the specification, so you have to read that, too. A claim may appear to be quite broad, but the discussion in the specification might limit general terms in the claim to very specific values or meanings. In most cases, a patent is not something you can just sit down and quickly understand, even if you are an expert in the field the patent is in.
Even this is not always enough. You should also read the "file wrapper" for the patent. That's the collection of documentation generated during the processing of the patent application. It will include things like the examiner's prior art search results, initial rejections of claims, the letters from the application trying to persuade the examiner to change their mind about rejected claims, answers to questions from the examiner, and stuff like that. You can get the file wrapper online through the "Patent Application Information Retrieval" (PAIR) interface [1].
[1] http://portal.uspto.gov/pair/PublicPair