Peer reviewing the patent system

June 30, 2007

Brady Forrest writes about Peer to Patent, a project developed in cooperation with the USPTO. From the About page

On June 15, 2007, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) opens the patent examination process for online public participation for the first time. With the consent of the inventor, the Peer-to-Patent: Community Patent Review pilot, developed by the New York Law School Institute for Information Law and Policy in cooperation with the USPTO, enables the public to submit prior art and commentary relevant to the claims of 250 pending patent applications in Computer Architecture, Software, and Information Security (TC2100). This historic initiative connects an open network of community input to the legal decision-making process.

A lot of effort has been put into the website as well, which has a lot of information, including a bunch of videos, including some by well known patent reform folks such as Pamela Jones and Tim O’Reilly. As Brady points out, getting to some information is not easy and somewhat buried. Hopefully they will improve on the usability of the site in time. The overall look and feel of the site is quite good, so they have a great platform to build upon.

The process is described via the following figure

patent process

and here is an excellent example of the kinds of review that are garnering attention

Peer review in the patent process is something that is long overdue. For one, the patent office is understaffed and tends to be very inconsistent. In addition, the concept of “prior art” has always seemed fuzzy to me. Patents in the sciences and for software are a burning issue, which I am not completely sure this process addresses, since there are policy issues to be considered there and philosophical questions as well.

All said and done, it is good to see the USPTO thinking out of the box and setting up a mechanism that is different and involves the community. Will it work? Hopefully, but given recent experiences with such efforts, getting sufficient traction will not be easy. Interestingly, Peer to Patent already has a presence on Second Life

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