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USPTO Peer Review Process To Begin Soon
Posted by
Zonk
on Mon Mar 05, 2007 06:22 AM
from the it's-like-every-einstein's-dream-come-true dept.
from the it's-like-every-einstein's-dream-come-true dept.
An anonymous reader writes "As we've discussed several times before on Slashdot, the US patent office is looking to employ a Wiki-like process for reviewing patents. It's nowhere near as open as Wikipedia, but there are still numerous comparisons drawn to the well-known project in this Washington Post story. Patent office officials site the huge workload their case officers must deal with in order to handle the modern cycle of product development. Last year some 332,000 applications were handled by only 4,000 employees. 'The tremendous workload has often left examiners with little time to conduct thorough reviews, according to sympathetic critics. Under the pilot project, some companies submitting patent applications will agree to have them reviewed via the Internet. The list of volunteers already contains some of the most prominent names in computing, including Microsoft, Intel, Hewlett-Packard and Oracle, as well as IBM, though other applicants are welcome.'"
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Your Rights Online: USPTO to Use Peer to Patent Program 124 comments
An anonymous reader writes "DailyTech is reporting that the US Patent and Trademark Office is going to start using the Peer to Patent program. From the article:' The US Patent and Trademark Office has been getting praise for officially launching the Peer to Patent program -- the purpose of Peer to Patent is to find patents that have been issued for already made products or items that don't properly qualify for a patent. Because the USPTO usually does not have the manpower and time to thoroughly check every patent that comes into the office, many are unjustly rubber stamped.' The program will utilize a Wiki, among other tools, to get the job done."
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Your Rights Online: Patent Reviews Via Wiki 84 comments
unboring writes "Fortune reports on a pilot program where the patent approval process would be opened to outsiders for review. Reviewers can vote and discuss on different proposals, through say a wiki. Given the many (recent and past) patent approval fiascos, this seems like a good idea. It'll be interesting to see how they would deal with the issues faced by Wikipedia."
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Your Rights Online: Patent Review via Community Not Wiki-based 40 comments
Moe Napoli writes "Articles have recently surfaced (CNET/ZDnet, Fortune and a mention here at Slashdot) incorrectly identifying the recent USPTO pilot Community Patent Review program to be Wiki-based. While a number of Slashdotters have identified why such an approach would create more problems than solve, the program's architect, NYLS Prof. Beth Noveck, continues the discussion and further clarifies why the program is not Wiki-based, yet 'conveys the appropriate sense of openness, transparency and collaboration.'"
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while they are at it... (Score:2, Funny)
Patent ratings!! (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
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In fact, the WaPo article sounds to me like the USPTO intends something much closer to Slashdot than a Wiki:
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332,000 / 4000 = 83 patents per year per employee.
83 / 2000 hours/year = 0.0415 patents per hour, or about 24 hours per patent.
Granted, a number of employees are secretaries and useless managers, but they should be pushing the bulk of the boilerplate anyway, leaving the examiners to devote most of their time to actual examining.
I call shenanigans* !
* shenanigan n Standard government waste.
well.. (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:well.. (Score:4, Insightful)
The purpose of patent protection is to grant the right of a person who comes up with something great to profit from it.
Without such protections, someone would invent something and then die of starvation before seeing any kind of profit. While he is trying to produce his invention, some megacorp would take his idea and put it in mass production and beat him to his own market. The inventor would be left with jack because noone would have to pay him to produce his innovation for themselves.
Parent
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Which RCA did to Farnsworth even though he had a patent, so what's your argument?
Thats not the same thing (Score:5, Interesting)
Patents are like anything else, there are abuses of the system, and extremes that can be cited, but in principle, we are better off with patents and copyright than we would be without them. The problematic cases and implementations need fixing, but don't throw out the whole system because parts of it need work.
It's easy to say "do away with it all". Its much harder to say what you would replace it with.
Parent
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The patent system is an abuse of the intellectual process for commercial gain. It should be abolished. It cannot be 'reformed'. The purpose of the patent system is to abuse the free inquiry and use of ideas.
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I think this is more of a semantic argument than a real difference, but I would argue that you don't really believe in democracy as a principle. I think you would agree that, in many cases, it is an effective method for building a better society; but also recognize that it is not the final solution.
Re: (Score:2, Offtopic)
If we are protected from the consequences of stupid decisions (such as giving a young girl who gets pregnant her own apartment and a monthly check- and freedom from her family) then people will engage in that stupid decision until the system breaks (hence welfare reform under a democratic president in the late 90's).
It sucks that deer will eat until there is no food and then starve to death. But if you put out food for them, it does
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Father raping and beating-- okay it happens. How many girls who slept with boys and got pregnant are we going to support? How many children with no family that grow up to be completely unproductive members of society are we going to support? There's a limit and we hit it so hard in the 90's that even the liberals said "no mas".
---
>Humans are not completely independent from one another, they interact. People don't lie starving in the
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I know you get by on a sustinence diet because even 50 cents a *month* can save an entire family in africa. So that coke you just had-- oh an entire family died because you didn't give it to them. What you spent 10,000 on a car? Omg- hundreds died so you could have a car.
The absolute *WORST* thing we can do for people in north korea is to provide them food aid. it only supports the
Why not unemployed, qualified paid volunteers (Score:4, Insightful)
Why not employ unemployed qualified volunteers and also pay them to do a peer review.
That way you solve two problems:
1. Boost employment to qualified people.
2. Prevent any bias since the people used by USPTO are unemployed anyway.
But, then like all other half-as$ed efforts by any Govt. agency, they will allow ballot stuffing by Microsoft and IBM....
Re:Why not unemployed, qualified paid volunteers (Score:4, Insightful)
So... Where do you suppose these qualified volunteers will come from? Perhaps present and former employees of companies that develop and use the kind of technology that gets patented are the people with the knowledge to make informed contributions to this Patent Wiki? I mean honestly, where do you expect they will come from? Slashdot, maybe? Believe it or not, the average Slashdotter may not actually be qualified for this type of work, and is every bit as biased as you suggest anyone working a "big company" is.
Parent
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Unfortunately, neither you nor the modders understand that the "volunteers" are those having their patents reviewed via internet, not doing the reviews as an institution.
Of course technical experts from those companies as well as anyone else, including any of us on slashdot, can also participate. The article describes the patent office deciding to initially follow a democratic pr
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Why not use free, transparent reviews from identified, publically disclosed reviewers across the internet who can be rated by everyone as to the value of their comments on the patent?
That is what the Washington Post article describes the Patent Office as deciding after talking to CmdrTaco, eBay experts, etc.
Although we'll be in uncharted waters if the Patent
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Now, tell me how "biased" an unemployed would be, if he is reviewing a patent by Microsoft, when he/she was laid off by Ford?
Oh, BTW, iam employed.
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Leaks are irrelevant. The wiki process would be (as far as I gathered, please correct me if I am wrong) open to anyone. By the very definition of a patent, the contents are disclosed in detail to the public and the Patent Office at the time of submission. Otherwise a patent application could be under review for a year while other people continued research on the subject, only to submit a patent application themselves on day 364, to be
no subject (Score:3, Insightful)
So each worker had to look at 83 of them PER YEAR
How the hell is this alot?
Re:no subject (Score:5, Insightful)
That's not actually a lot if you think about it. Sure some patents are probably trivially rejectable, but many probably require some deciphering before you get to the "omg that's obvious" stage.
Like this 7 page [google.com] patent (yes, I'm picking on them) for table based multiplication. Not only is it an obvious idea, that even the average 10 year old could figure out, but it's already been used by many hardware manufacturers (ARM used it for the ARM7 multiplier for instance). From the first few claims the "invention" doesn't really seem invalid until you put it together, and realize that it's the mechanical equivalent of long hand multiplication.
While you or I would easily spot that patent and say "no shit," a patent examiner must be able to defend their decision, so they must actually cite prior art (or make a convincing argument the idea was obvious). That also takes time.
Tom
Parent
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However, I don't see where filing patents is a right. If a company abuses it, they should have their patent abilities suspended.
Tom
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Ok, I guess I shouldn't make any more suggestions if they are just stupid. Your turn.
Greater workload than you think... (Score:4, Insightful)
The vast majority (I'd say 98%) of patent apps are initially reviewed and rejected, but the attorney usually argues the rejection and/or adjusts the claims and sends the aplicaiton back. So the examiner has to re-review the application, and this back-and-forth action often goes on for months or years before the patent is finally issued or abandoned.
So really, each examiner is looking at twice as many applications a week as you think they are. Even though half of them are ones they've already seen, it typically takes 3-6 months to get a reply, and by then it's hard to remember all the details. Also, the claims are often so changed that a whole new prior art search is required. As Tom noted, it sometimes takes a while to dig up the prior art to shoot down each claim, even if the invention is clearly obvious.
At least in my art unit, it was rare to find an application with a spec that was under 20 pages and had less than 30 claims. I'd say 40-90 claims was the average. That's a lot of material to sift through, especially for entry-level engineers with little experience in the industry (which comprise the PTO's vast majority of employees). When I worked there, it was pretty standard for patent examiners to work 10 hour days in addition to Saturdays or Sundays, and not get paid for the overtime.
Parent
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I assume this statement will be followed up by an explanation of how to use Google to find documents with verifiable timestamps proving that they were published before a specific date.
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Try researching the validity of 1.5 20 page technical documents for a field you have absolutely no expertise in a week.
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Judging by the whole mess the patent system is in, one could make a case that they didn't bother doing any research during that week anyway...simply let the application sit for a while then stamped it "approved" so long as it wasn't something very silly (like a warp drive).
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Errrr... because it probably take several weeks to understand most patents especially if you are not an expert in that particular field.
How Wonderful, M$ Employees Will Be Doing This (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:How Wonderful, M$ Employees Will Be Doing This (Score:4, Interesting)
I read TFA, and I don't see how that could happen.
The system doesn't allow MS employees (or anyone other than patent office employees) to approve patent applications, or even support them. The only thing that can be done through the wiki is to offer evidence of prior art that may invalidate the patent applications.
Of course, MS employees could try to invalidate all of, say, IBM's patent applications, or opponents of patents in general could try to invalidate everyone's applications, perhaps even submitting bogus prior art. That's why they're trying to create a reputation system, initially determining the weight to give a particular submission by the submitter's academic and professional credentials and then after the system has been running for a while using submission history -- favoring the submissions of those who have submitted solid prior art citations in the past.
I don't see any way this won't be an improvement over the present system.
It also doesn't appear to me that the submitters will be limited to employees of the listed corporations. Based on my reading of the article, it sounds like anyone who has the relevant qualifications will be able to participate. IBM, MS, etc. have volunteered to pay some of their employees to participate. It's rather obvious that they would want to, actually. It's much cheaper to invalidate other companies' patents before they're granted than to fight them in court afterward. It would be a good idea for the OSTG to pay a couple people to participate as well, focused on invalidating patents that may represent a risk to open source.
Parent
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Also I could be wrong, but the way I read the article it seemed like only those companies would be testing the system, not
Language? (Score:3, Interesting)
Oh, and penalties for things that are obviously non-patentable like this [google.com] table base multiplier. But the penalty shouldn't be money, though the fees should be forfeited. It should be in time. As in each obvious, or invalid patent sends your company to the bottom of the patent pile for 12 months.
The # of patents doesn't match the # of true innovations. So the true solution to the problem, and not the stopgap band-aid solution, is to reduce the # of junk patents. Since companies can't be trusted [sadly] to use self-control we'll have to, as a society, impose penalties and restrictions.
Maybe if companies knew they could lose patents for legit ideas by filing bogus applications they'd think twice before sending in the application?
Tom
This is more like Slash-like than wiki-like (Score:2, Informative)
"Anyone who believes he knows of information relating to these proposed patents will be able to post this online and solicit comments from others. But this will suddenly make available reams of information, which could be from suspect sources, and so the program includes a "reputation system" for ranking the material and evaluating the expertise of those submitting it. (...)
Patent examiners, for instance, will award "gold stars" to people who previously submitted the most useful information for
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It's supposed to be, they consulted CndrTaco about it. It has even more elements of eBay and Amazon as well. I don't think it has much to do with the Wikipedia process at all from what I can tell.
Apparently "citing" Wikipedia is based on pure name recognition and easier to under
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It sure sounds like it to me. In fact, I suggested much the same thing as this here: PatentDot [slashdot.org] on Feb 19, 2006.
I don't know if they actually referred to this post when they designed this system, but it seems to have the same elements involved. Heh. Maybe I should have patented it? <grin>
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The b
Unfair advantage (Score:2)
That is an unfair advantage because two reasons.
First, they will have a better view of developing technologies than the other companies. They will know earlier than others if some new tech is available, innovative and useful. They will be able to buy out the upstart producing it before anyone else.
Also, they will be able to give a harder time in the review process to patent applications coming from competitors.
Wiki-like? (Score:2)
Hopefully, the US Patent Office will not allow people with false credentials to review the patents.
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Some Numbers (Score:4, Informative)
In actuality, only 332,535 patents were disposed in FY2006, which means the backlog (already in excess of on million patent applications) only grew. In a system where your application is not likely to even be looked at for the first 22 months, and it takes more than 2.5 years for the average application to be processed, they are desperately in need of help examining.
The most depressing part of the report is to look at their goals. The objective is not to reduce the backlog, or improve first action or total pendency time, it is simply to have the backlog increase by less than in previous years. With this kind of thinking, there is no end in sight. What is really needed is a radical change of leadership, such that the resources being allocated and the goals being set can actually improve the situation.
Typo in Title (Score:3, Funny)
To being soon what?
It's a difficult problem, but (Score:4, Insightful)
Remember, the law as it currently stands states, "A person shall be entitled to a patent unless..." Thus, the burden is on the examiner to PROVE that a patent should not be granted. This can be VERY hard, even when the technology appears clearly to be unpatentable.
I have to say, I am very surprised at some of the comments coming from such an educated group of people. Destructive criticism will get us nowhere.
Notwithstanding the problems of our current system, patents ARE important for protecting innovation. Countries from around the world recognize this, and, believe it or not, try to emulate our system for the protection of intellectual property.
Give the Patent Office some credit here. This is a DRASTIC and REVOLUTIONARY change they are trying to institute here. It is VERY progressive, and it seems very in-tune with the open-source trend in information sharing and collaboration. They clearly recognize the need for change, and they really are working to find the right solution.
So before you start ranting about how the patent office sucks and how patents should be abolished. Take some time to think about why patents fundamentally encourage and protect innovation, and why the job facing the Patent Office is not so easy.
Again, everyone is looking for a better solution. That is why the Office is testing this program! Maybe it will work, maybe it won't. One thing, however, is sure: unhelpful and unreasonable criticisms from close-minded individuals do not help.
USPTO Rational for "Rubber Stapping" of Patents (Score:2)
I do not think that being over burdened with work is an acceptable reason for granting any patent. As for the "One Click" patent, who ever granted that one should be fired for cause. That decision actually did cause damage to internet commerce, on a global scale. As for the concept of "Software Patents". Software was always litigated using copy write law.
Won't it be illegal, in Illinois at least? (Score:2)
I like this quote from David Kappos at IBM: "For the first time in history, it allows the patent-office examiners to open up their cubicles and get access to
This won't last (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Prove your worthiness you must, or deny your patent I shall...