You got it. That's exactly what will begin to happen and to a large extent, at this point, it is a manpower problem. The PTO cannot simply hire more people. Although IP is a tremendous resource to the U.S. it is still an area that is underfunded. But I think this new initiative will have the effects that you speak of, mainly lowering the number of arbitary/malicious patent submissions. If there are more eyes to pry over the details, individuals and corps will be less inclined to submit bogus patents.
Mrxak The patent office is overburdened with prior art searches that must be conducted in a relatively short window of time. The current turnaround time on a patent application is 44 months, I believe the patent office will be rolling out a wiki-style patent community in which you would be able to contribute to the patent office's search for prior art and ultimately see a turnaround time of 7 months. Obviously, you would only be inclined to do so if you were deeply passionate/vested in a particular field of industry. Also, how would you go about hiring experts for emerging technologies, business proceses, and non-obvious uses? Its a bit tougher than it seems.
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You got it. That's exactly what will begin to happen and to a large extent, at this point, it is a manpower problem. The PTO cannot simply hire more people. Although IP is a tremendous resource to the U.S. it is still an area that is underfunded. But I think this new initiative will have the effects that you speak of, mainly lowering the number of arbitary/malicious patent submissions. If there are more eyes to pry over the details, individuals and corps will be less inclined to submit bogus patents.
Mrxak The patent office is overburdened with prior art searches that must be conducted in a relatively short window of time. The current turnaround time on a patent application is 44 months, I believe the patent office will be rolling out a wiki-style patent community in which you would be able to contribute to the patent office's search for prior art and ultimately see a turnaround time of 7 months. Obviously, you would only be inclined to do so if you were deeply passionate/vested in a particular field of industry. Also, how would you go about hiring experts for emerging technologies, business proceses, and non-obvious uses? Its a bit tougher than it seems.