Slashdot Mirror
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' ..."
is about -42 Libraries of Congress.
(reply only with a more clever analogy)
Even if you work with a very narrow scope and manage to keep your work well hidden from the public, there's usually going to be some prior art if your work has any value at all. Good innovation, however, is driven by the limitations of current technology. As long as your work builds upon what's been done in a meaningful way, your ideas should be patentable. Usually, this happens in corporations and academia because they're the only ones that have been working in the field long enough to know the limits of current technology, but it can definitely happen with small time innovators as well if they read alot technical literature on a particular subject.
1- suck at your job
2- get someone more competent and involved to do it for free
3- profit !!
--- Back to the trees, back to the trees !
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.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
...you do realise that patents are public domain?
I never really understood the business method patent thing.
can I build a copy of a patented item if I want?
Isn't it only illegal if I try to sell that item?
a company isn't selling it's business method.
So unless it's a consultancy firm which makes it's money restructuring other businesses...
You can use a patent spec for research purposes or when you will not harm the financial benefit to the patent holder (IIRC). So you can't sell it, but also you can't benefit financially nor cause a financial detriment to the patent holder. So you can't give patented stuff away (without a license) as this potentially harms the patent holders income. If you're using a business method then you're gaining financially from it ... ergo ...
Business Method patents are a weird thing in a capitalist economy though.
Note that pure business methods (without technical elements) aren't supposed to be patentable in Europe.
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.
If information wants to be free, why does my internet connection cost so much?
I haven't seen the program, but if they intend to harness the "Wisdom of the Crowds", the signal-to-noise ratio is going to be a problem.
www.peertopatent.org
That is the link to sign up and become a reviewer.
dotank.nyls.edu
That's the code of conduct, which lists conduct rules, moderator privileges, and the information contributors are required to provide.
Apparently there is a voting system.
That's going to be an interesting thing to watch. They're relying on the bulk of contributors defining the most appropriate content, kind of like slashdot.
How well does that work anyways?
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?
erroneous: look me up in a dictionary
You know you're free to view those patents anyway.
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.
Usually, this happens in corporations and academia because they're the only ones that have been working in the field long enough to know the limits of current technology, but it can definitely happen with small time innovators as well if they read alot technical literature on a particular subject.
Not always. In my chocolate factory, we had patented an idea; it must have been good, because as soon as the patent expired, everyone and their dog (in the chocolate world) began doing Just That.
It was small-time innovation at the time... now a few years back (but much later), we met a guy who was using the same idea in his products and he thanked us for the idea that had made him rich. Way richer than us, I can tell you...
But the idea was had without reading lots of technical stuff. All you need for having ideas is a working brain. There was even no machine for doing what we had invented at that time...
Making laws based on opinions that stem up from false informations leads to witch hunts.