PTO Seeks Public Input on Patent Applications

KingAdrock writes to tell us Sciencemag is reporting that the US Patent and Trademark office (PTO) is floating the idea of an online pilot program to gather public input on patent applications. From the article: "Speaking last week at an open forum, officials said that tapping into the expertise of outside scientists, lawyers, and laypeople would improve the quality of patents -- and might also reduce a backlog that this month topped 1 million applications. "Instead of one examiner, what if you have thousands of examiners reading an application?" says Beth Simone Noveck of New York University Law School, who is an independent advocate of the idea."

Comments

Re:Well.. one drawback.

[DrMrLordX]

Is that really going to help? Large corporations could easily field thousands of paid moderator trolls working through proxies or what have you. It would be impossible to police the system unless pre-designated online moderators were used for patent review. And if they did that, the whole notion of community review would go out the window.

Re:Well.. one drawback.

[ehrichweiss]

What if the public is only allowed to declare if there is possibly prior art, not take part in the actual approval process itself? Are these corps gonna hire people SIMPLY to find prior art to invalidate patents? If so, we'll have a LOT fewer patents and that might not be such a bad thing. I mean that IS the goal, right. And yes, while it would enable the corps to attempt to lock-out private inventors, it is also a two way street.