Slashdot Mirror

as long ago as 2003
http://old.nyls.edu/pdfs/hunter_lastowka.pdf

I haven't seen the program, but if they intend to harness the "Wisdom of the Crowds", the signal-to-noise ratio is going to be a problem.

www.peertopatent.org

That is the link to sign up and become a reviewer.

dotank.nyls.edu

That's the code of conduct, which lists conduct rules, moderator privileges, and the information contributors are required to provide.


Apparently there is a voting system.

That's going to be an interesting thing to watch. They're relying on the bulk of contributors defining the most appropriate content, kind of like slashdot.

How well does that work anyways?

Please see http://dotank.nyls.edu/communitypatent/ for the Peer to Patent Project, a Community Patent Review. It allows you to review currently pending patents and provide prior art references. One of the more significant issues with patents is that the holder (plaintiff) is presumed to be the wronged party in any legal proceeding. The defendant is presumed wrong. A suit can be brought for as little as $350 and to answer the complaint from the plaintiff can cost upwards of $10,000 and that's just the beginning. Think about spending $15,000 to $20,000 per month for at least 12 months in any patent litigation. Now consider having multiple simultaneous litigations regarding different patents. The problem is that the defendants costs are orders of magnitude higher than those of the plaintiff. Most plaintiffs simply cannot afford to fight and therefore settle for some amount of money close to or slightly less than what it would cost to go to trial. Trial cost is about $500,000 and you have no guarantee of winning. If you do win, you have little recourse against the plaintiff unless they were clearly in the wrong. Then, sometimes the plaintiff simply has no money! Patents used to be used by companies to protect themselves from other companies by virtue of Mutually Assured Destruction. Microsoft couldn't really sue Apple and Apple couldn't really sue Microsoft because they both did things that probably infringed on each others patents. Therefore neither side sued, and in fact, they executed a deal to share each others patent portfolios. Today, you have companies like Acacia Research, and more importantly, Intellectual Ventures, who don't have a business other than hording patents and licensing them. There's very little for them to loose when they attack another company with their patents. IV and others will be increasing their use of patents to extort money from just about every company. Just watch and see.

While this is an interesting idea in theory, it would unfortunately have little impact within the current system because patent examiners at the PTO do not have unrestricted internet access. In fact, what they have is extremely limited--they can't, for example, "google" for prior art. I believe the databases they rely most heavily upon are unique to the PTO. So in a system such as you propose, this prior art RSS feed would prove most useful as evidence in patent litigation for a party challenging the patent (I'm assuming, arguendo, that the quality and logistical problems with the concept could be solved). However, it would have little or no impact for examiners at the PTO, meaning no reduction in patents being granted. And once a patent is granted, it carries a presumption of validity...

Thankfully, the USPTO has begun a trial run of a new PEER-TO-PATENT system, as proposed by New York Law School Professor Beth Simone Noveck http://www.nyls.edu/pages/591.asp in Peer to Patent: Collective Intelligence and Intellectual Property Reform, which can be found at 20 Harvard Journal of Law Technology 123 (2006) for those of you who want some interesting reading--especially about how ridiculous each PTO examiner's workload is. The PEER-TO-PATENT Project http://dotank.nyls.edu/communitypatent/ between the PTO and NYLS will solve some of the issues with prior art (and obviousness, hopefully), but it'll likely be years before we start seeing any real progress on this front.

For the most egregious software patents, we will still *sigh* have to rely on private litigation for invalidation, but recent Supreme Court decisions (Ebay, MedImmune, Teleflex) may have made that process a little easier as well.

While this is an interesting idea in theory, it would unfortunately have little impact within the current system because patent examiners at the PTO do not have unrestricted internet access. In fact, what they have is extremely limited--they can't, for example, "google" for prior art. I believe the databases they rely most heavily upon are unique to the PTO. So in a system such as you propose, this prior art RSS feed would prove most useful as evidence in patent litigation for a party challenging the patent (I'm assuming, arguendo, that the quality and logistical problems with the concept could be solved). However, it would have little or no impact for examiners at the PTO, meaning no reduction in patents being granted. And once a patent is granted, it carries a presumption of validity...

Thankfully, the USPTO has begun a trial run of a new PEER-TO-PATENT system, as proposed by New York Law School Professor Beth Simone Noveck http://www.nyls.edu/pages/591.asp in Peer to Patent: Collective Intelligence and Intellectual Property Reform, which can be found at 20 Harvard Journal of Law Technology 123 (2006) for those of you who want some interesting reading--especially about how ridiculous each PTO examiner's workload is. The PEER-TO-PATENT Project http://dotank.nyls.edu/communitypatent/ between the PTO and NYLS will solve some of the issues with prior art (and obviousness, hopefully), but it'll likely be years before we start seeing any real progress on this front.

For the most egregious software patents, we will still *sigh* have to rely on private litigation for invalidation, but recent Supreme Court decisions (Ebay, MedImmune, Teleflex) may have made that process a little easier as well.

... then the new peer to patent http://dotank.nyls.edu/communitypatent/ and FLOSS as prior art http://osapa.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page efforts would be in the clearest sense, intent to deceive as they would then be used as a resource for filing.

There is a requirement of proof of inventorship that does not go away with first to file.

Prior art still applies, but this reform is supposedly designed for hair splitting decissions.

We shall see. If its about deception then it will end the patent system.

http://dotank.nyls.edu/communitypatent/index.php

Here is one proposal that is quickly gaining much support.

http://dotank.nyls.edu/communitypatent/

I believe they are intending to build a community review process, not a community wiki of patents. So there will be threaded discussion, karma, ratings AND group editing of documents. From what I can tell the project is designed to provide a community forum and process where experts can work together (or singly) to identify prior art, rate the relevance of submissions and send a sorted list of best examples to examiners BEFORE the examiner decides whether to approve of the patent. They may also take on the "novelty" part of the claim but this is obviously more subjective and therefore a somewhat harder problem.

Curiously, neither the submission nor the CNN article gave a link to the actual project page for the Peer to Patent Project. That page has more information and a blog giving updates on progress. There's also a Community Patent Proposal Wiki, but it seems to be down.

Interestingly, the lead sponsors for the project are HP, IBM, Microsoft, and Red Hat. Strange bedfellows, eh?

While not being overtly optimistic about its chances of success, the Peer to patent project is an initiative that has good support from the industry, seems able to lobby the USPTO efficiently and could drastically reduce the number of obvious patents actually granted.

In two words, they propose to use web tools such as wiki and comment areas to let anyone involved in the patent world (inventors, lawyers, competitors...) comment and annotate patent applications before they are reviewed by the patent examiner.

This seems a nice balance to me between ease of implementation (very few changes to the law and practice of the patent office are required to implement this initiative) and likelyhood of improving the situation.

While not over-optimistic on its capability to solve the problem, the Peer to patent project is an initiative that has good support from the industry, seems able to lobby the USPTO efficiently and could drastically reduce the number of obvious patents actually granted.

In two words, they propose to use web tools such as wiki and comment areas to let anyone involved in the patent world (inventors, lawyers, competitors...) comment and annotate patent applications before they are reviewed by the patent examiner.

This seems a nice balance to me between ease of implementation (very few changes to the law and practice of the patent office are required to implement this initiative) and likelyhood of improving the situation.

Slashdot article: USPTO to Use Peer to Patent Program
Web site: The Peer to Patent Project: Community Review
Audio: Peer to Patent: Collective Intelligence for our Intellectual Property System

That is the Slashdot teaser handline we are waiting for. Look at the 118,000 plus pissed off customers responding to Smeds thread. Not to mention the ones not allow to post because they were already banned ( A blessing since their lose was not as great as the 2 year plus veterans of the game having the game taken away from them and asked to play the new kiddie car version aka NGE).

  Smed and his council of dread at SOE have been high and mighty until the had their asses handed to them by Blizzards WoW. Last year at time , I was requesting a reconsideration for a game ban for alleged forum misuse while I was into my 3rd week of WoW, I warned them that I was playing a competitive product but Bruce and Grava to not care. I even took to Andy Zaffron who kindly took my phone call on my game ban for forum misuse and stood behind his co-workers. I am not suprised . If you listen to Law in Virtual Worlds on http://www.nyls.edu/pages/3903.asp Mr Zaffron can be quoted to say concerning the EULA ( that and the TOS are altered numerous times to fit their needs) " IF you do not like our EULA , go play some other game".

With the recent mismanagement of SWG and the flipflop on selling vitual goods with the Station Exchange, Customers are now playing other games and SOE has NOone but themselves to blame.

I found these interesting links about more patent reform work out there. The first one is a partnership between IBM and some university people on building some kind of peer review patent system. Looks very interesting:

http://dotank.nyls.edu/communitypatent

Second is an article by one of the university people with more details on this (PDF warning):

http://peertopatent.jot.com/WikiHome/PeerToPatent- BethNoveck.pdf

O'Reilly MAKE magazine editor Philip Torrone has already casually commented that MAKE is thinking of putting out some SL How Tos. Now I'm totally looking forward to something like the O'Reilly Metaverse Developers Conference =D. That's got to be on its way sometime, with an eye to Web 3.0 ;-).

Here's the SF Muni WiFi site

http://www.sfgov.org/site/tech_connect_page.asp?id =33899

if you read the Answers to Written Questions submitted by Sept 7th doc, you'll see that the city is not really interested in using wifi to it's full potential.

52. Q. Does the City plan to use TechConnect as a _primary infrastructure_ for Emergency/Disaster Service?

A. The City anticipates using TechConnect as one network to provide service in an emergency situation. The City does not plan to rely on a single technology, network or service for emergency/disaster service.

They have no SLA's that require the network to last after a disaster with redundancy, batteries, alternative power etc It seems, they narrowly changed the question and gave an elogated answer because they want free wifi from Google rather than holding out for a better overall city solution.

We need to find ways to allow real public participation in the creation of the wifi network for the city. Particularly one that works right after our inevitable earthquake.

Right now the city is taking Comments through end of September, but it is starting to seem they have already decided to go with whatever Google offers.

The SF approach to public comment is pretty lame - blind email only - please encourage them to get into the 21st century with e-rulemaking technologies to help create the best SF Muni RFP. Also encourage the committee to post electronically all the RFI/RFC submittals - since some groups may try to avoid publicity by submitting them only on paper.

A sample wonderful e-rulemaking site:

http://dotank.nyls.edu/projects/ERulemaking/sys_in dex.pl

Here's some great ways we could use technology and smartmobs ideas to improve the city response

http://www.stephensonstrategies.com/

Send your email comments requesting more open public participation and real support for disaster recovery wifi to the following:

TechConnect Information Line: (415) 554-5008

Email: techconnect@sfgov.org

Board of Supervisors:

http://www.sfgov.org/site/bdsupvrs_index.asp?id=72 71 particularly:

tom.ammiano@sfgov.org who as been an advocate of SF Wifi and

Ross.Mirkarimi@sfgov.org

Mayor:

Telephone: (415) 554-6141

Email: gavin.newsom@sfgov.org

SF Office of Emergency Services

http://www.sfgov.org/site/oes_index.asp?id=1399

ANN.STANGBY@SFGOV.ORG (Disaster planning Chief)

Ever wonder why they aren't here in the US? Ever wonder why you can rent movies, console video games, heck even music videos, but not music?

Because the industry got it coded into law, forbidding "rental, lease or lending". Japan has no such law, which is why CD rental stores are common there. Note the same law is also why you can rent console video games, but not PC video games.

Libraries were fortunate enough to have been given and excemption, which is why you can borrow music CDs from your local public library.

Let me contribute some working URLs:
http://www.newyorkmetro.com/nymetro/news/crimelaw/ features/n_8815/
http://www.securitypipeline.com/policy_privacy/182 01365
http://www.nyls.edu/pages/1363.asp
http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.j html?articleID=10700824
HTH.

Analog signals can't be compressed nearly as well as digital - so stations would need big new allocations of the spectrum to broadcast (fat chance). It also means good bye, interactive TV, good bye multicasts, etc - there just wouldn't be the room for them. (you can get more info about this here, if interested.)

You have to check the archive for altavista.digital.com to get the original sites

Remember the $3.35 million domain name dispute from 1997 ?