US Patent Office to use wikis and Digg style voting to process patent applications

The US Patent Office will make patent applications public on the web and invite anyone to comment on prior art, probably on a wiki or blog. Users will also be able to vote on the best comments, much like Digg works today. This according to The Washington Post.

The Patent and Trademark Office is starting a pilot project that will not only post patent applications on the Web and invite comments but also use a community rating system designed to push the most respected comments to the top of the file, for serious consideration by the agency's examiners. A first for the federal government, the system resembles the one used by Wikipedia, the popular user-created online encyclopedia.

Dan Farber at ZDnet has been reporting on this story for several weeks. Dan has talked to the people at the patent office and others advising them. Here is an excerpt from Dan's article. (Nice to see Microsoft as a sponsor)

Patent applicants can volunteer to open up their filings to the public, and many of the big R&D companies (Intel, Microsoft, HP and IBM, for example) have agreed to participate.

As Duda told me, "We want to give third parties the opportunity to give information to the USPTO, so the examiner has information from their own research, the applicant and from third parties. When examiners have all information, they almost always make the right choice."

I have written several times about "patent lunacy" and "patent trolls". This move by the patent office will help the 4,000 patent examiners deal with the 332,000 applications submitted last year. That is an average of 83 patents per examiner. If you have ever read just one patent from beginning to end you will appreciate the enormity of the challenge.

This is a great move! There is a lot of expert knowledge out there, available for free, to review these patent applications. This process will be similar to the "peer review" process at technical journals. The voting on comments will employ the "wisdom of crowds" to float the best comments to the top.

The blind test. It would be really great if the patent application could be reviewed while keeping the applicants name secret. This would help avoid biased comments and political battles. Wouldn't it be a hoot if employees of the applicant company unknowingly argued against the validity of their own patent application? All because they didn't know the identity of the applicant. That would certainly keep some objectivity in the process. It probably isn't a workable idea, but it would be interesting.

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Comments

[Steve Morsa]

...well, it certainly can't hurt to give it a try. Only by testing can we know for sure.

Me gut tells me, however, that such an approach will most likely end up being of little long-term value, due in the least to the lack of paid searchers.

Who's going to pay these people? Sure; the first set/s or two will get interest and attention...but then what? With the 300,000+ apps/year, are the big companies really going to pay/hire people to do this?...

...and one can only imagine the free-for-all that'll occur with the public being able to submit their own ideas; who, let's be honest; are nowhere near being qualified to judge whether or not an invention is novel or unobvious...based on what they believe to be prior art.

Shoot--even the patent experts argue over these things all the time.

It's going to be a circus...sort of like blogs not moderating submitted comments to keep the wackos out.

The examiners are probably laughing their heads off over this...well, except probably those who are "lucky" enough (draw straws, anyone?) to be assigned to these apps. They're going to be kicking their desks...

I've got a few better ideas, though. How about the fed govt stop stealing patent fees for the general budget...and lighten the burden of the hard-working examiners...and give them the non-patent prior art databases and tools they need to do the tough job the vast majority are trying to do.

Now those are steps that would make a real difference.

BTW, PatentlyO.com has some nice insight and discussion on this test program as well.

[Alvaro]

P2patent (peer to patent)
The same idea some months before and with MegaTech support.

http://www.communitypatent.org/project_docs/

[John Orava]

As an independent research lab that has seen much ruthless behavior regarding IP (intellectual property), I think this idea will cause the US to lose further ground in the IP. Hired shills will provide false information complete with phony witnesses. In the global IP wars, those controlling IP and possessing the muscle to enforce the IP will rule the future economies.