Patent system opens up to the public

By Matt Whipp

Posted on 23 May 2006 at 17:47

Details of the first meeting to outline a system whereby US patent examiners can get help from the public to assist in prior art searches have been revealed.

At the beginning of the year, the USPTO, along with IBM and proponents of open-source including the OSDL, announced a series of initiatives aimed at improving patent quality using ideas that drive the open-source community, such as peer review.

One of these systems is known as the Open Patent Review, aimed at giving a wider community the opportunity to view patent applications and submit relevant prior art.

A meeting earlier this month demonstrated how far this initiative had progressed, with dummies of an interface for the project as well as an outline of exactly how the process would work.

Professor Beth S. Noveck, of New York Law School, presented papers on how the system might work, noting that the success of online communities can be directly applied: ultimately how allowing public ownership of parts of that system can ensure that success.

The system would draw from ideas such as Wikipedia, where it is possible to submit vast amounts of information and have an effective and open vetting and editing procedure for that information through the community.

Equally the notion of reputation as seen in Slashdot and eBay offers a way of rewarding participants of particular expertise and identifying prior art submissions of worth.

A patent application would be published online for two months and emailed to experts in the area in which the patent is classified.

The system would allow the general public to submit examples of prior art, which would be evaluated by a special group of experts. Once that vetting procedure has taken place, the results would be sent to the patent examiner and the inventor.

At the moment, the thinking is that an inventor would have to consent to their application being handled in such a manner, rather than it becoming necessary. IBM said in the meeting that it was prepared to run some of its existing patents through the process. However, any such offerings are likely to be carefully chosen beforehand, and as the world's largest patent holder, it shouldn't have any trouble unearthing a handful of undisputable patents.

Even so, there were those attending the meeting with concerns over the project, including the potential increased cost to the USPTO, how applications of dubious frankness would be handled and the impact on the time needed from application to a decision. But with some applications only receiving between 18 and 20 hours attention from an examiner, they clearly need help.

The system itself will be built over the next half a year, with a pilot launch scheduled for January of next year.

Analysts at Pund-IT welcomed the idea. 'A growing number of high profile/high stakes patent suits is crowding the news and the Supreme Court's recent ruling in the eBay/MercExchange case suggests that the Justices are far more willing to consider a much broader range of issues and remedies in patent cases than they have in the past. In addition, the notable synergies between collaboration and innovation have proven their worth repeatedly in IT, suggesting that the model should be successful elsewhere.

'The real question is whether or not such a concept has a snowball's chance of success in the occasionally hellish recesses of IP law. We believe so.'