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.

Comments

Admitting the Problem

[moore.dustin]

Well regardless of the outcome of the program, at least the admitted the issue as being true. People know more about software that are not directly affiliated with the USPTO. Knowing and admitting that this is true is a significant step in the process of fixing the system. Seeing that the door is open, regardless of how wide, is a good sign that things may be able to worked out with technology and all other patents alike.

Re:Admitting the Problem

[aurispector]

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.

Re:Admitting the Problem

[MadUndergrad]

Albert Einstein didn't work at the United States Patent and Trademark Office. He wasn't in America at that time.

Re:Admitting the Problem

[MTocci]

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.

Re:Admitting the Problem

[TapeCutter]

"...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.

Re:Gaming public review

[e4g4]

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 valid patents are worst

[BlueParrot]

Of course this doesn't help at all because the patents that can cause the most trouble are the valid ones. Under current law you could easily get a valid patent on a media encoding format as an example, and suddenly the free software community is banned from implementing it. This is why mp3s cause problems. Prior art can't fix this problem, only a change in legislation can.

Build and Generate Revenue to get a full patent.

[Runesabre]

White paper design proposals should only be given limited patent protection with the requirement of a fully functional, revenuing generating implementation completed within a limited time frame before being granted full patent rights, protection and legal authority to sue for infringement. That would eliminate the patent trolls.

Trivial/obvious patents are a bit more difficult since many things seem obvious or trivial after the fact.

Some ideas to avoid patent misuse

[thePig]

I mentioned some in my earlier post http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=267689&cid=202 12953.
Just some thoughts.

1. Cost of patenting based on the wealth of the patentee. This should help the small garage inventor + actual real good innovations. Patent trolling will be less effective.
2. Patent to be supported by product within a period of 3 years. It is the responsibility of the patent holder to provide proof that a product that was created by his patent has been made after 3 years. This product has to be a) made by the patent holder or b) the patent holder has given license to the company which creates it. Otherwise the patent lapses. This would again take care of the patent trolls + help actual good inventions
3. The cost of patent to be borne across the years. Every 5 years the patent has be re-issued with quite a high fee (again based on the wealth of patentee). This means that only good useful products are under patent for the complete duration of the patent. This again will support the basic idea of patenting, i.e. really good useful ideas not to be kept under wraps, and not the small ideas.

I guess these ideas should help modify the patent system so that
a) Patent office gets more money which means more people, which means better results
b) Small guy inventor is supported
c) Real good ideas can be patented for the whole duration
d) Company still can work freely without struggling with frivolous patents, while producing real good products under patents themselves.

Re:Some ideas to avoid patent misuse

[mjr1007]

No discussion of U.S. patents should start without first looking at the constitution, Article I Section 8 Clause 8

"To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries;"

It's interesting to note that initially Jefferson thought it was a really bad idea to give out a monopoly. He should have gone with his first thought.

There are other ways of promoting the progress of science and the useful arts then granting a monopoly. The most obvious being granting ownership of the idea but requiring the owner license it to any and all.

A simple 10% fee on all goods which can then be split between all IP holder for the item would eliminate the risk to those producing goods. An arbitration board could decide the value of each patent but it would not effect those producing the goods. Once the patent runs out the government would get the money.

Only goods with patents are protected. So if a company comes up with a new protocol and tries to keep it a trade secret by the license it would have no protection and could be reverse engineered for free, no matter what the license may say. The law always trumps private contracts.

Valid patent applications should be free. On the other hand invalid ones should cost. The scale should be sliding so the more obvious, the more overly broad or just plain ridiculous the application the higher the fee. Also there should be higher fees for repeat offenders.

It is believed that this will encourage progress without getting in the way of competition. The point here is that progress and production are not the same thing and should not be conflated.

The problems with Peer-To-Patent

[RegularFry]

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.

Re:Not trying to be a grammar nazi (I promise)

[smallfries]

More worryingly than that - why start a program designed to cut down on bad software patents in the UK. Software patents aren't legal over here...