Peer to Patent one year on
IPKat - IP news and fun for everyone: A press release informs the IPKat that Peer-to-Patent has released a report on the results of its one-year pilot project. The idea of the project was to improve patent quality in the United States by connecting the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) to an open network of scientific and technical experts to enhance the patent examination process.
Right: Peers of the realm - but can they review the prior art?
Says the press release:
“Launched on June 15, 2007 by New York Law School Professor Beth Noveck together with a network of corporate and academic collaborators and in cooperation with the USPTO, Peer-to-Patent is the first social networking project with a direct link to decision-making by the federal government. Under traditional practices, USPTO patent examiners bear the sole burden of identifying and relating information pertinent to patent applications. Under Peer-to-Patent, expert volunteers were permitted to assist in these efforts at the Web site. With the consent of participating inventors, patent applications were posted to the Peer-to-Patent site where the expert reviewers discussed the applications and submitted bibliographic information, known as prior art, relevant to determining if an invention was new and non-obvious, as the law requires to obtain a patent. At the conclusion of the review period, this prior art was forwarded to the USPTO patent examiner for consideration and use in their further search efforts.
Major companies such as IBM, Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, Sun Microsystems, Intel, and GE, companies whose patent portfolios account for nearly one-third of the patents issued to the top 30 U.S. patent holders in 2007, all submitted patent applications to the Peer-to-Patent process. Other patent applications were submitted by Red Hat, Cisco, and Yahoo!, as well as smaller firms.
Data from the first year of the Peer-to-Patent pilot shows that an open…