Slashdot Mirror
Behind the USPTO's Working With Peer-To-Patent
Down-with-the-patents writes "As this community discussed earlier, the US Patent and Trademark Office is collaborating with the Peer-to-Patent program to stop bad patents from issuing. Brigid Quinn, spokesperson for the USPTO, explains the motivation of the USPTO to open up to the public what has been a behind-closed-doors process. Groklaw's Pamela Jones notes that 'when it comes to software, there is more knowledge outside of USPTO than inside it.' While some of Jones's readers are staying away from the pilot program, hoping that the patent system will just collapse of its own weight, Jones says that's a goal she understands but doesn't view as realistic. The project seems to be doing pretty well with over 1,000 active participants, and plans to replicate it in other patent offices starting with the UK next year." Slashdot and Linux.com toil for the same corporate overlord.
Heh. I know a few folks that work for the patent office. Wonderful, intelligent folks tasked with the impossible, who also have no control over the politics of policy.
I have mod points. The reign of terror begins now.
A cursory examination of the site (peertopatent.org) gives me the impression that in order to give objections to a given patent any credence, one must in fact provide proof (i.e. a link to a previous patent, or to a peer-reviewed article). Admittedly, this has its own limitations, but nevertheless, my (admittedly brief) examination of the site gave me the impression that even in the free-for-all discussion section, the contributions are well thought out and well supported.
This can certainly be explained by the (very) small population of contributors, but at the same time I think trolls would be easily identifiable and just as easily disregarded. Since the prior art that is actually evaluated by the USPTO is determined by the community (I believe they submit the top 10 highest rated prior art examples to the patent office), I believe that there is a sufficient corrective force in the community based system to prevent people with profit-driven agendas from significantly changing the judgement of a patent.
The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources. - Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein didn't work at the United States Patent and Trademark Office. He wasn't in America at that time.
He didn't work for the USPTO, but he did work for the Swiss Patent office before getting his landmark papers published in 1905. He didn't write patents, he was a patent examiner.
"...do you actually know anything about Einstein? If you did, you'd know he was incredibly socially awkward, as many people with a mind like his were."
I have read two biographies on Albert, he was a tad eccentric but was far from "socially awkward" as demonstrated by this speech he gave before he left Germany.
"I'm pretty sure Einstein never worked for the USPTO"
Correct, he worked as a clerk for the Swiss patent office in 1904, roughly 30yrs before he came to the US. While at the Swiss patent office he reportedly had trouble understanding "double-entry" bookeeping but it's more likely the PHB who tried to explain it to him was the one having trouble.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
I say this as someone who's actually signed up and participated in a patent discussion, so this isn't just uninformed waffle.
There are two problems that I've identified with the process so far. The first is that the examiner who's assigned to the patent doesn't seem to take part in the discussions around the patent. That would be extremely valuable to keep discussions on track, so that we as a community can help find more relevant material. A lot of discussion that I've seen starts off with "I've read the abstract, I don't like the idea, here's why" without actually producing anything of value in terms of admissible prior art, or evidence of non-obviousness. That starting point is almost completely useless - it's just noise, especially if the points raised are easily countered simply by reading the first couple of claims. If there were more dialogue visible (especially with an examiner at the wheel), I believe that would happen less. This brings me to the second problem.
There just aren't enough people taking part. We need more people. The range of the patents being discussed is really quite broad. A population of 1000+ just doesn't have enough people in it to guarantee that someone with a deep understanding of the area of each patent is going to be present. However, I think that this is caused by how few patents are actually in the system. People arrive, hearing about the project from articles such as this, see that none of the patents particularly interest them, and leave. It doesn't help that the sign-up process is tricky to navigate. I hope that this will change over time as more patents are added into the system, but the risk is that in the intervening period the project will be seen as not being effective and will be canned. That would be a crying shame - it has the potential to make a real difference.
Reality is the ultimate Rorschach.