Slashdot Mirror
USPTO Peer Review Process To Begin Soon
An anonymous reader writes "As we've discussed several times before on Slashdot, the US patent office is looking to employ a Wiki-like process for reviewing patents. It's nowhere near as open as Wikipedia, but there are still numerous comparisons drawn to the well-known project in this Washington Post story. Patent office officials site the huge workload their case officers must deal with in order to handle the modern cycle of product development. Last year some 332,000 applications were handled by only 4,000 employees. 'The tremendous workload has often left examiners with little time to conduct thorough reviews, according to sympathetic critics. Under the pilot project, some companies submitting patent applications will agree to have them reviewed via the Internet. The list of volunteers already contains some of the most prominent names in computing, including Microsoft, Intel, Hewlett-Packard and Oracle, as well as IBM, though other applicants are welcome.'"
... maybe they could start peer reviewing /. titles too
How about some common sense. For one thing the applications are overly complex if you ask me. I bet amazons one-click patent app was over ten pages. You read ten pages on making a one-click-super-ecommerce-solution and you might think it was a complex patentable idea. Well, maybe you wouldnt but someone there does.
Libertarian Leaning Political Discussion Forum.
Why employ as "volunteers" from Oracle, HP, IBM, etc., which are known patent abusers?
Why not employ unemployed qualified volunteers and also pay them to do a peer review.
That way you solve two problems:
1. Boost employment to qualified people.
2. Prevent any bias since the people used by USPTO are unemployed anyway.
But, then like all other half-as$ed efforts by any Govt. agency, they will allow ballot stuffing by Microsoft and IBM....
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
So each worker had to look at 83 of them PER YEAR
How the hell is this alot?
If we let Microsoft employees do this work for the Patent Office, I can only imagine what sorts of patents are going to get approved. M$ will have every patent under the sun. Somehow, I don't think letting huge corporate interests "assist" the government would make the process better.
Part of the hardcore faithful who believed in Apple long before it was cool again to do so
Why not just require more concise, less ambiguous language in the patents?
Oh, and penalties for things that are obviously non-patentable like this table base multiplier. But the penalty shouldn't be money, though the fees should be forfeited. It should be in time. As in each obvious, or invalid patent sends your company to the bottom of the patent pile for 12 months.
The # of patents doesn't match the # of true innovations. So the true solution to the problem, and not the stopgap band-aid solution, is to reduce the # of junk patents. Since companies can't be trusted [sadly] to use self-control we'll have to, as a society, impose penalties and restrictions.
Maybe if companies knew they could lose patents for legit ideas by filing bogus applications they'd think twice before sending in the application?
Tom
Someday, I'll have a real sig.
I wonder if a system like this will get my patent on left side book binding through.
"Some books contain the machinery required to create and sustain universes."-Tycho
Software patents are invalid. Now where's my consultancy fees for doing the USPTOs job for them?
Huh?
From TFA
"Anyone who believes he knows of information relating to these proposed patents will be able to post this online and solicit comments from others. But this will suddenly make available reams of information, which could be from suspect sources, and so the program includes a "reputation system" for ranking the material and evaluating the expertise of those submitting it. (...)
Patent examiners, for instance, will award "gold stars" to people who previously submitted the most useful information for judging earlier applications (...) Ultimately, those registered to participate in this online forum will vote on all the nominated information, and the top 10 items will be passed on to the examiner, who will serve as the final arbiter on whether to award a patent. (...)
To assure that the outcome can be trusted, some of those involved in designing the program say some kind of weighted voting system may eventually be required. "If voting is necessary, you'll have to have some rules about who gets to vote,"
How is this not Slash, from our truly and good Slashdot? Everything is there, from Score to karma to Mod points. This is far from being wiki, and much more like being slash.
Anyway, what I would like to see is truly peer reviewed patent examination, the kind of review that is done in the scientific community, where the process is publicly disclosed (let's say, in a specialized magazine) and people in the field either submit proof that it is either obvious or has prior art or accepts the patent as valid. Similar to what happens when one claims to have found a proof to some mathematical theorem. Not that I believe that it will happens someday, but a man can dream, can't he?
Your post at 6:32 Why not just require more concise, less ambiguous language in the patents? is clearly a violation of my Intellectual Property in my 6:27AM post For one thing the applications are overly complex if you ask me. Please cease and desist immediately.
Libertarian Leaning Political Discussion Forum.
Yoda, "Work for USPTO I do."
So the big companies will have a influence on what new technologies get patents?
That is an unfair advantage because two reasons.
First, they will have a better view of developing technologies than the other companies. They will know earlier than others if some new tech is available, innovative and useful. They will be able to buy out the upstart producing it before anyone else.
Also, they will be able to give a harder time in the review process to patent applications coming from competitors.
When his defense asked, "Which computer has Jon Johansen trespassed upon?" the answer was: "His own."
As I understand it, in the present system rejected patents are not published. So if someone tries to patent something but are told that it is already known, trivial etc. then they can walk away and instead rely on secrecy to stop their competitors from just cloning their invention. (The situation is similar with applications that require modification.)
In this new system, as far as I can see the application is published for 'internet review' such that the competitor can see what the claimant wanted to patent, whether it is going to be granted or not. So they no longer have the possibility of using secrecy to defend their inventions.
The result could be that fewer patent applications are made, with people instead relying more on secrecy. This is unlikely to help - for example - people who want hardware manufacturers to be more open with their specs.
But what it's doing now is stopping progress.
I for one welcome our karma-whoring patent denying overlords...
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Hopefully, the US Patent Office will not allow people with false credentials to review the patents.
To Being! Finally, to Being!
I'm not sure where the Washington Post got their numbers, but according to the USPTO's own Annual Report, they received more than 615,300 patent related applications, which were dealt with by 4,883 examiners. A reasonable calculation then suggests that they would have to process the applications in an average of 15 hours each to keep up with demand.
In actuality, only 332,535 patents were disposed in FY2006, which means the backlog (already in excess of on million patent applications) only grew. In a system where your application is not likely to even be looked at for the first 22 months, and it takes more than 2.5 years for the average application to be processed, they are desperately in need of help examining.
The most depressing part of the report is to look at their goals. The objective is not to reduce the backlog, or improve first action or total pendency time, it is simply to have the backlog increase by less than in previous years. With this kind of thinking, there is no end in sight. What is really needed is a radical change of leadership, such that the resources being allocated and the goals being set can actually improve the situation.
"Si vis pacem para bellum" -Publius Flavius Vegetius Renatus
... maybe they could start peer reviewingOnly to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
"USPTO Peer Review Process To Being Soon"
:) Or is Yoda writing headlines again?
To being soon what?
Vincent J. Murphy
Spandex Justice
His points defend the principle of patents. You are attacking certain abuses of the patent system. These are different arguments. I believe in democracy as a principle, but if 51% of the country voted that black people should be tortured, I would be against it. I'm in favour of the principle of the free market, but if some people lie starving in the street because they have no job or skills, I'm against that.
Patents are like anything else, there are abuses of the system, and extremes that can be cited, but in principle, we are better off with patents and copyright than we would be without them. The problematic cases and implementations need fixing, but don't throw out the whole system because parts of it need work.
It's easy to say "do away with it all". Its much harder to say what you would replace it with.
DRM-free indie games for the PC and Mac: Positech Games
Thought occurs to me of requiring the people who register patents to be required to be randomly selected as in affect a juror on a number of patents, the number determined as a geared ration against the number of patents they register. So a single application might require you to review two, ten a hundred. (Obviously the gearing changes in a sliding scale).
Details like what evidence of research needs to be submitted etc would need defining but I like it. It throws the cost back onto the biggest users of the system and of course opens up a whole new avenue of anti-competitive behaviour as people work in cahoots to not find evidence to contest their own interests.
It seems the general trend in some of these posts is that the cooperations will have the final say in patentability. This is not the case in any way. They are allowed to chime in and say "look at this... this is prior art." The most useful art is passed on to the examiner who usually spends (usually) a couple of days of searching for any valid prior art. The examiner would have the final say... period. There will be a risk of falsifying a source but the patent office does not use websites for prior art and instead will look to the actual publication for rejection making it much harder to falsify.
Another theme I saw less is that cooperations will have access to applications that do not yet have patents. The funny thing is that YOU TOO have the same access. any patent in any software field has a backlog of WELL over 18 months... and guess what... 18 months is exactly when ANY application is published. They will have exactly the same access as any member of the public, any document under review will be in the USPGpub
I agree that there are kinks to work out, but a lot of people here are taking the stance that "oh... a part of it doesn't work so let's throw the whole thing out" when that would probably be more damaging.
Large companies do have deep pockets for litigation, but that same money would be much more efficiently spent pushing little guy after little guy out of the way if no protection existed.
The original generic sig.
the US patent office is looking to employ a Wiki-like process for reviewing patents.
My review to this pattent application is that HGJ IS A FAG!!!!
Of course, no one denies that the patent system needs change--most likely a significant reform. The Patent Office knows this!! They are currently hiring thousands of examiners to help deal with the backlog. They have instituted hotelling programs to allow examiners to work from remote locations, thus freeing up valuable office space for new examiners. The Office is constantly developing new search tools to better help examiners locate prior art, especially for business method and software patents which can be very hard to invalidate.
Remember, the law as it currently stands states, "A person shall be entitled to a patent unless..." Thus, the burden is on the examiner to PROVE that a patent should not be granted. This can be VERY hard, even when the technology appears clearly to be unpatentable.
I have to say, I am very surprised at some of the comments coming from such an educated group of people. Destructive criticism will get us nowhere.
Notwithstanding the problems of our current system, patents ARE important for protecting innovation. Countries from around the world recognize this, and, believe it or not, try to emulate our system for the protection of intellectual property.
Give the Patent Office some credit here. This is a DRASTIC and REVOLUTIONARY change they are trying to institute here. It is VERY progressive, and it seems very in-tune with the open-source trend in information sharing and collaboration. They clearly recognize the need for change, and they really are working to find the right solution.
So before you start ranting about how the patent office sucks and how patents should be abolished. Take some time to think about why patents fundamentally encourage and protect innovation, and why the job facing the Patent Office is not so easy.
Again, everyone is looking for a better solution. That is why the Office is testing this program! Maybe it will work, maybe it won't. One thing, however, is sure: unhelpful and unreasonable criticisms from close-minded individuals do not help.
Could somebody please point to the verb in that title?
I'm trying to make sense out of it but I can't.
"... Last year some 332,000 applications were handled by only 4,000 employees. ..."
I do not think that being over burdened with work is an acceptable reason for granting any patent. As for the "One Click" patent, who ever granted that one should be fired for cause. That decision actually did cause damage to internet commerce, on a global scale. As for the concept of "Software Patents". Software was always litigated using copy write law.
Someone patent Wikis. We'll make a fortune licensing it to the USPTO!
Saying your "phone ran out of batteries" is like saying your "car ran out of gas tanks".
... to take a drink from the patenthose?
No, the headline was written by Mujibar....
"City hall" in German is "Rathaus" Kinda explains a few things......
(Former patent examiner here)
The vast majority (I'd say 98%) of patent apps are initially reviewed and rejected, but the attorney usually argues the rejection and/or adjusts the claims and sends the aplicaiton back. So the examiner has to re-review the application, and this back-and-forth action often goes on for months or years before the patent is finally issued or abandoned.
So really, each examiner is looking at twice as many applications a week as you think they are. Even though half of them are ones they've already seen, it typically takes 3-6 months to get a reply, and by then it's hard to remember all the details. Also, the claims are often so changed that a whole new prior art search is required. As Tom noted, it sometimes takes a while to dig up the prior art to shoot down each claim, even if the invention is clearly obvious.
At least in my art unit, it was rare to find an application with a spec that was under 20 pages and had less than 30 claims. I'd say 40-90 claims was the average. That's a lot of material to sift through, especially for entry-level engineers with little experience in the industry (which comprise the PTO's vast majority of employees). When I worked there, it was pretty standard for patent examiners to work 10 hour days in addition to Saturdays or Sundays, and not get paid for the overtime.
I like this quote from David Kappos at IBM: "For the first time in history, it allows the patent-office examiners to open up their cubicles and get access to a whole world of technical experts". Does that mean that the USPTO has been ignoring technical experts? And what is their source of information? National Geograpic? Rob Brezny? Da bones? Magic 8-Ball?
The Russians have won. They have made the world a cesspool of distrust, greed, fear and hate.
Base the review system on the ASTM model used for creating national standards. Each patent would be assigned to one sub-committee. The voting members of the committee are limited to only one per corporation or university but qualified private consultants/individuals can serve too. Non-voting associates of the voting member are welcome to participate in the discussion. The patent committee will serve as an advisor to the examiner with each claim accepted or rejected by consensus vote but the rejecting votes have to be backed up by evidence or they can be overridden. This is not really a Wiki-model but in the commercial arena the competing interests tend to balance one another and the private individual or University researcher provide more or less disinterested intellectual depth. Final discussion should be online in real time by phone or telecommuting. Ideal would be face time but that is impractical financially.
Unlike the PTO's examiners, who nowadays see applicants as their "customers", the commentors won't have a bias towards letting things slide. So they'll rightly shoot down most applications, and (assuming the PTO takes this seriously) grant rates will plummet. The PTO will regard this as a bad thing, and end the project.
Share and Enjoy: 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
If one of the major stumbling blocks is the searchability and indexability of prior art, why not ask Google to lend a hand? I hear they've got a couple of people into that whole 'search' thing...
doing the peer review...
The fall down is that the open source community generally sees it bad for a developer to subject themselves to patent information as that is a mental virus that leads to claims of "knowing" by those supporting patents against a developers work.
We are talking pre-patent granting.
Then there is the additional back and forth of patent application that is simply trying to remove open source land mines. (the same sort of land mines patents present the open source developer). This peer review is something that can only help to bias the patent system against open source.
But the real kick in the head is that software itself is not of patentable nature in ever way and shape you can honestly describe it in. It makes what currently is patents in software, act of fraud, deception against man kind.
If the patent office really wanted to reduce their work load then they would simple get honest about software. That it is not of patentable nature. Protection is found in copyright, so there is no real arguement claim that without software there is no protection...................but just a lie when you hear it.
Peer review.... more correctively, selective peer review..... Its no review at all. At best only patent holders against patent holders. A game that dictates to every one else and treates them like a forced spectator.
I say keep if software patents are not going to be banned then leave the land mine playing field fair.