Tapping the Web's Collective Wisdom For Patents

BountyX sends in a CNN story offering an update on the US patent office's experiment in crowdsourcing, called Peer-to-Patent. (We've discussed this initiative a few times in the last couple of years.) In its first year the program has dealt with a minuscule fraction of patent applications, which numbered over 467,000 in 2007, up over 97% from a decade earlier. "The Patent Office reports that it has issued preliminary decisions on 40 of the 74 applications that have come through the program so far. Of those, six cited prior art submitted only through Peer-to-Patent, while another eight cited art found by both the examiner and peer reviewers... [I]n its second year, Peer-to-Patent is being expanded to include claims covering electronic commerce and so-called 'business methods' ..."

Comments

A good plan

[MosesJones]

Now I'm sure there will be a bunch of people moaning that this is getting "us" doing "their" job for free. Well hell the time spent here on Slashdot having ago at the Patent office is already high enough so why not be constructive in using that time?

The only problem I see with this is that they haven't really invested in the tech side of crowd sourcing. How about a SETI style desktop app that just notifies you and lets you go "ooooh that one looks crap, I'm taking it down" rather than a build it and they will come approach. The key here is going to be getting more eyes on the problem which means pushing the patents out rather than just waiting for people to respond. Personally I'd be happy to have a list of patents in my specialised areas that I could dissect and destroy. Its almost worthy of a CV mention, not just the patents that you've been granted but the ones that you've prevented being granted.

Don't bitch and moan, this is a good use of the internet and crowd sourcing to get round a problem of dumb patent submissions from large corps. Yes its your time, but you'll just have to post one less time on Slashdot, and spend 5 minutes less reading comments on Digg.

Re:A good plan

[rtfa-troll]

Now, I'm not a patent lawyer (though nor, I suspect are you) so there might be something I'm missing, but I don't think this is a good use of our time.

These patents have been accepted That means that we failed in peer to patent. The patents were accepted with new prior art. That means that it's no longer easy to use that prior art to challenge the patent. The patent examiner has taken it into account and accepted the patent anyway. I think that, if the prior art had remained secret, it could be brought out at the time of a lawsuit and be used to invalidate the patent. The courts are a much harsher environment than the patent examiner for patents.

Since this project hasn't managed to block any patents, it's total effect is to strengthen patents which would otherwise be weaker. The prior art was there anyway. We could have found it when there was a lawsuit. Now it won't do us any good.

The problem with Patents

[delt0r]

The problem with patents is not so much that they are issued left right and center for just about any stupid claim. Its that is so expensive in terms of lawyers and most importantly *time* to challenge them. The courts seem to assume that a issued patent is by default valid where this is clearly not that case. At least not currently.

The second biggest problem is that "someone skilled in the art..." really means a Judge who is skilled in legalese.

The lawyers and patent attorneys are loving it.

Re:The problem with Patents

[pacinpm]

The problem with patents is not so much that they are issued left right and center for just about any stupid claim.

You are wrong. It's the source of the problem.

The courts seem to assume that a issued patent is by default valid where this is clearly not that case. At least not currently.

See, now you are on to it. The courts assume the patent office is working as intended. They assume that PO is rejecting "wrong" patents. It's how they should work. The way to improve this is not lowering court costs but improving PO work.

Re:The problem with Patents

[delt0r]

The list of stupid patents goes a long way back. If there is a way to effectively challenge a patent in *under* a year (I think it perhaps takes over 5 currently) then folk won't try to get patents for things that are stupid. Then the large amounts of patent applications goes down and hence the quality of patent review goes up.

Forcing all of this on the patent office could work if there was a lot more money *for the patent office*, as opposed to lawyers. Either the fees goes way up and/or they get a bigger slice of the Federal tax pie.

Personally I see the incentive to innovate being more protected by an easy and even *lawyer less* (null lawyer model) method of challenging patents with prior art etc.

signal to noise

[erroneous]

Given the level of understanding shown on this and other internet forums, I fear that the signal to noise ratio of such an initiative will be so poor that the whole thing will be a massive waste of time.

How many ill-informed and inappropriate "prior art" submissions do the internet masses need to make before patent reviewers just start ignoring them?

Let's look at the numbers

[Zontar_Thing_From_Ve]

So more than 467,000 patents were filed in 2007. Let's just call it 467,000 to simplify the math. 74 patents were submitted to the program. So that means that 1 out of every 6310 patents were submitted to this program. As I have said before, this whole program is a scam designed to convince the complainers that the patent office is "doing something" about the "patent problem".
b I used to work for the US government at one time and I can promise you all that they will never, never, never do anything to cut their funding and lowering the number of patents would cut their funding. They will instead set up bogus programs like this that will catch a few bad patents, which they will then hold up as examples that things are changing for the better. It's all smoke and mirrors.