USPTO Peer Review Process To Begin Soon 116
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.'"
well.. (Score:4, Interesting)
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
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.
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.
Re:How Wonderful, M$ Employees Will Be Doing This (Score:2, Interesting)
Also I could be wrong, but the way I read the article it seemed like only those companies would be testing the system, not the only ones participating in the final product. If/when it is implemented, again this is just the way I read it, experts could register with the patent office and be able to submit and review other's comments. Again, one person could submit bogus information, but the rest of the reviewers would jump on it.
And yes, obviously you could have a sort of gouging thing where everyone is paid to up-vote certain information which may not be technically correct, but the same could happen in the patent office with the current system; there's no stopping this sort of thing no matter what system you're using.
Again, the patent examiners would at least have _some_ information which they may not have been able to easily find before (in an approximate three day period), especially when, from the article, "they are discouraged from using the Internet in their research".
I think this system has a lot of potential and IMO would do nothing more than help assist the current one.
Re:while they are at it... (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:Patent ratings!! (Score:3, Interesting)
adéu,
Mateu
Re:Thats not the same thing (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".
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>Humans are not completely independent from one another, they interact. People don't lie starving in the streets because they are too lazy, but because the rich fucks who made their money on their backs fire them to make more money, so there is no job to go to.
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It's both. Some people lie starving in the street because they are incredibly lazy. Some folks are very unfortunate and get screwed over by rich people. When ever we start to help the screwed over ones, the lazy ones start to bogart the aid. The more we let the lazy one's bogart the aid, the more people become lazy. A lot of the hippie culture in california existed because they got free government money. Perfectly able 20 year olds made the "rational" choice- have sex, drugs, and free money vs get a job, married, and earn your own pay (while paying for all those hippies having fun).
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>Your analogy with the deer is quite to the point, but I would want to add several points:
For one, when you demand that everyone should work even if there is no need (why do you think there is marketing? Because people are forced to work if they want to survive, even if there is no work which needs to be done - or rather, the work which needs to be done will not be paid for), it is a collosal waste of ressources which could be allocated better.
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This is in fact a huge crisis just ahead of us that I raise regularly and people poo poo my concerns. We are coming to an age where (via machine labor) you really don't have to work as long as you don't want the "finer" things of life. It could be paradise, or it could be hell on earth depending on how we make the transition.
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>Secondly, what else are you going to do with the food you have? Burning it and paying the food makers to make less food, it seems. If there were an actual lack of ressources, it might be reasonable to let them starve, but as a matter of fact since the advent of industrialization and automatization there is a severe overproduction in the industrialized world which leads to less work, meaning people starving on the streets - not because they do not want to work, BUT BECAUSE THEY ARE NOT ALLOWED TO WORK AND YET YOU SAY THAT IF ONE DOESN'T WORK, HE MAY NOT LIVE.
Thus, they do not die because of consequences of their actions, but BECAUSE YOU MURDERED THEM.
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Again- this applies to a VERY TINY percentage of people. The rest are perfectly capable of finding work and food. They simply have attitude problems. "That works not good enough for me". A severe problem with welfare is that people rationally say, "Okay I can work for 40 hours a week and make $20 more than welfare or I can scam 20 bucks from mowing a lawn or doing odd jobs and stay on welfare".
Fact is, I came from a single mom family- worked my ASS off, put myself through college without grants, and I'm only of slightly better than average intelligence. If I did it, anyone can do it if they want it bad enough. When you give folks an easy out- it undercuts their motivation. My life is a lot better now than if I had taken the welfare route.
Finally- it's MY DAMN MONEY. As I said, I worked my ass off for 11 years to get where i am. When I want to give to charity- I do. When I want to build houses for the homeless, I do. What I don't want is some third party like you taking my money and giving it to people you decide are worthy. You give them YOUR money if you think they are so worthy. I'd probably give them something too- but I'm spent out on the other causes that I feel are deserving.