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Patent Reviews Via Wiki
unboring writes "Fortune reports on a pilot program where the patent approval process would be opened to outsiders for review. Reviewers can vote and discuss on different proposals, through say a wiki. Given the many (recent and past) patent approval fiascos, this seems like a good idea. It'll be interesting to see how they would deal with the issues faced by Wikipedia."
Probably because a wiki is more meant to be a point of reference than forums are. There's nothing to stop them from adding a forum to the wiki, though.
"Common sense will be the death of us all"
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?
The chances of this happening are inversely proportional to the chances that it will be abused if it does happen. If a major company has a multimillion dollar product on the line, they will do ANYTHING to make sure it gets approved, even if it means sabotaging any method open to the public. It doesn't matter if it's a wiki, a forum or a voting system, they will abuse it because millions (or even billions) could be on the line.
Conversely, if a company's competitor has a multimillion dollar product on the line, it could be very beneficial to help dig up prior art to prevent/negate a patent and then cash in by selling (or not withdrawing) a similar product. That might sound bad, but it would allow for actual innovations to get protected (no prior art) and allow the public (as well as other companies) to pay less for derivative items because of increased competition. If the idea catches on, the grassroots/astroturf community could get used to help ensure keep sabotage successes to a minimum.
I think it's a great idea. I just wish I could see how it'd apply to biotech items. Patenting genes and chemicals found in nature still bugs me.
"Common sense will be the death of us all"
It's like some persons who are clueless about patent reality thought of a new solution at the round table.
Even worse, it's a solution to a problem which doesn't actually exist. The vast majority of people think they understand the patent process but simply don't. Publication is a vital part of the process, as is prior art assessment, demonstrating novelty and non-obviousness (to a "person skilled in the art"). You get a patent (ie. exclusive right to commercially prosper) for a set amount of time (20 years in most places) in exchange for disclosing the idea to everybody.
There is nothing to stop you filing a patent application which is an exact copy of an existing, granted patent. That patent application could go to PCT and be published at 18 months and then progress into national levels in individual territories. This could take 3-5 years and can happen without anyone in the patent office having actually examined the validity of that patent . If the patent application was published without an international search report, it might not even have been cross-referenced against the existing patent database!
Even granted patents are technically not valid until they have been challenged and upheld by a court.
"Because it's there." - George Mallory, when asked why he wanted to climb Mt Everest, March 18, 1923 (New York Times)