Are you a believer in patent reform, perhaps especially around
software and business method patents?
Are you a subject matter expert anywhere=A0in the field of computing?
Are you reasonably adept at searching for prior art with respect to
new technologies?
=A0
If you answered "yes" to any of the above, this message is for you.
And maybe a free t-****rt as well; read on.
=A0
The notion of "community patent review" proposes that public comments
on current patent applications can aid in the examination process,
helping overburdened examiners to find relevant prior art, and improve
the average quality of issued patents.
=A0
Right now there is a community patent review pilot project underway,
sanctioned by the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and sponsored
by several computer industry firms including IBM, HP, Red Hat, Sun,
Microsoft, and others.=A0 It is called "Peer-To-Patent" and operates
from a web site at http://www.peertopatent.org/.=A0
For this approach to
be successful, it needs the attention of a greater number of subject
matter experts.=A0 Even with the small number of applications that
appear in the pilot, many of them are getting little attention from
the people most likely to know of relevant prior art.=A0 That's where
you can help out.
=A0
Will participation necessarily take up a lot of your time?=A0 It need
not.=A0 If you only want to see patent applications in a particular
domain, you can register for an alert when a new patent application=A0in
that area is posted to the project's web site, if one is.=A0 There seem
to be on the order of 20 or fewer patent applications available for
review at any given time, and you can quickly browse those to see if
any are of particular interest.
=A0
Does it actually work?=A0 Early results seem to indicate that it does.=A0
That is, the USPTO does pay attention to the prior art submitted via
this pilot project, and examiners have already referred to some of it
in rejecting claims of a number of the first couple dozen or so
applications that have reached that stage to date. =A0(See for example
http://issueswire.com/releases/2008/04/prweb893734.htm.)=A0
I've been
noodling around with this on and off for about a year now, essentially
as a "hobbyist", and so far two of my submissions have been used
thus.=A0 The applications in my area of domain expertise have been few
and mostly from my own employer (IBM), so my contributions have
largely been from searching around things=A0that I could at least
understand :-)=A0and found interesting.=A0 This is not as efficient as I
imagine it would be for a subject matter expert, but until there are
enough experts keeping an eye out, for some applications it's hobbyist
or nothing.
=A0
Will registering subject you to loads of spam?=A0 From my experience,
no.=A0 I originally registered under a junk email address just in case,
but so far I've only received a couple broadcast updates about the
project, plus alerts I specifically signed up for (new patent
applications coming onto the site, and for new postings to
specific=A0patent applications under review that I had subscribed to),
and a survey request after each application I participated in
completed its cycle on peertopatent.org.
=A0
What's in it for you?=A0 Well, in addition to the warm fuzzies you might
get from contributing to a social good, you may also have the
op****tunity to head off a competitor's ill-advised patent.=A0 If your
submitted prior art is used by the USPTO in an initial office action
rejecting a patent application's claims, you will also receive public
recognition on the project's web site.=A0 There's also a free t-****rt on
offer if you participate constructively in the public review of a
patent application and respond to=A0the survey about your participation
after the application finishes the review cycle.
Here's hoping you and your friends will join and help raise the bar on
patent quality!
Regards,
=A0- Steve P.
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