Just Write

In talk­ing with the guys at The Con­ver­sa­tion, I men­tioned the U.S. Patent & Trade­mark Office‘s project for crowd-​sourcing eval­u­a­tions of soft­ware patent appli­ca­tions, called Peer-​to-​Patent.

Dan and Dave expressed some inter­est in the peer-​to-​patent pro­gram:

“[Never heard of it], but it sounds awe­some.”

–Dave Nan­ian

Peer-​to-​Patent

There is a guide on how it works, and here is their attempt at mar­ket­ing copy:

“Peer-​to-​Patent opens the patent exam­i­na­tion process to pub­lic par­tic­i­pa­tion for the first time. Become part of this his­toric pro­gram. Help the USPTO find the infor­ma­tion rel­e­vant to assess­ing the claims of pend­ing patent appli­ca­tions. Become a com­mu­nity reviewer and improve the qual­ity of patents.”

…hia­tus

The project is not cur­rently run­ning, and no “active patent appli­ca­tions” are being eval­u­ated:

U.S. Peer-​to-​Patent in Evaluation:

“The U.S.Patent and Trade­mark Office and New York Law School are presently prepar­ing an eval­u­a­tion of the two-​year Peer-​to-​Patent U.S. pilot. Results of that eval­u­a­tion should be com­plete by the end of the year.

How­ever, David Kap­pos (the cur­rent leader at the Patent & Trade­mark Office) was involved in design­ing it, and has recently (Fri­day) expressed inter­est in con­tin­u­ing it.

Post-​issue

Also, there is a related grass-​roots effort coor­di­nated by the cen­ter for patent inno­va­tions at the New York Law School, called Post-​issue. Rather than eval­u­at­ing pend­ing patent appli­ca­tions, Post-​issue attempts to gather sim­i­lar com­mu­nity input on cer­tain issued patents:

“Post-​Issue Peer to Patent, or sim­ply Post-​Issue, seeks to improve the qual­ity of patents by pro­vid­ing a frame­work for fer­ret­ing out weak, non-​meritorious patent claims in patents that have issued.

Har­ness­ing the power of a com­mu­nity of peer review­ers cre­ated through Peer to Patent (www​.peer​topatent​.org), Post-​Issue elic­its pre­vi­ously uniden­ti­fied prior art that may inval­i­date or nar­row the claims of issued patents. In so doing Post-​Issue pro­vides greater free­dom to inno­vate, removes uncer­tainty from the patent sys­tem, and pro­vides greater cer­tainty as to the value of issued patents.

Whether for-​profit or non-​profit, whether for respond­ing to demand let­ters or lit­i­ga­tion or for improv­ing a party’s own patents, all par­ties are invited to request post­ing of patents to Post-​Issue for review.”

Cau­tion:

Cal­i­brate your expec­ta­tions, because par­tic­i­pat­ing in this kind of pro­gram takes a lot more effort than your aver­age com­ment on a blog (and prob­a­bly more than your aver­age blog post!)

If the ser­vice is suc­cess­ful, it just might be worth the effort.