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.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.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.