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.'"

Comments

Re:no subject

[tomstdenis]

5 days a week, times 47 [or so] weeks of work == 235 days. That gives them just under 3 (2.83) days to read the patent, understand it, look for prior art, and then say "yay/nay."

That's not actually a lot if you think about it. Sure some patents are probably trivially rejectable, but many probably require some deciphering before you get to the "omg that's obvious" stage.

Like this 7 page patent (yes, I'm picking on them) for table based multiplication. Not only is it an obvious idea, that even the average 10 year old could figure out, but it's already been used by many hardware manufacturers (ARM used it for the ARM7 multiplier for instance). From the first few claims the "invention" doesn't really seem invalid until you put it together, and realize that it's the mechanical equivalent of long hand multiplication.

While you or I would easily spot that patent and say "no shit," a patent examiner must be able to defend their decision, so they must actually cite prior art (or make a convincing argument the idea was obvious). That also takes time.

Tom

Patent ratings!!

[Savage-Rabbit]

... maybe they could start peer reviewing /. titles too Nah.... We'd be much better off if the USPTO followed our example and started giving anonymous members of the public the ability to assign mod-points to patents. People could express their approval of a patent with ratings like: '+1 Innovative', '+1 Ingenious' while particularly silly patents would get a rating of: '+1 Funny'. As for disapproval, it could be expressed with ratings like: '-1 Prior Art' or the somewhat more forceful: '-1 WTF!?!' and let's not forget the indispensable: '-1 Patent troll'. Just imagine how much fun we could all have with a system like that!

Thats not the same thing

[cliffski]

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.