US Patent Office Seeks Aid To Spot Bogus Patent Claims

First time accepted submitter startling writes "Members of the public are being asked by the US Patent Office to help weed out bogus patent applications. It wants the public to contribute to a website that will spot applications for patents on technologies that have already been invented. The website, called Ask Patents, will be run by US firm Stack Exchange that has a track record of operating Q&A websites."

Comments

A few bad apples is *not* the problem!

[ciaran_o_riordan]

MPEG LA claims to manage 346 patents (in the USA alone) which are necessary for anyone who wants to write a video player that can play this very widely used format.

Eliminating 5%, or even 95% of these patents will change nothing. Software developers will still have to ask MPEG LA for permission, and MPEG LA will continue to prohibit free software implementations.

Why bother with these complicated, time-consuming ideas? The way to fix the problem (and unblock the patent office), is to make software simply non-eligible.

* http://en.swpat.org/wiki/MPEG_LA

* http://en.swpat.org/wiki/Raising_examination_standards_wouldn't_fix_much