I've been thinking lately that with the number of patents in existence, the likelihood that a newly submit patent application is truly novel without any invalidating prior art is probably very low.<p>The USPTO should start each review under the premis that the application will probably be denied unless the application includes sufficient justification for it being truly novel.<p>If the USPTO started denying the majority of applications you'd, 1) start seeing less applications, and 2) applications would be of a higher caliber.