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| USPTO Workshop on the Peer to Patent Project Friday |
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Tuesday, May 09 2006 @ 07:29 PM EDT
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You may have read already the announcement about the USPTO's workshop on Friday about the Peer to Patent Project in News Picks, or perhaps you saw the Daily Tech article, also on Slashdot today: The public will get a chance to review patents before they are approved by the USPTO
The US Patent and Trademark Office has received praise for officially launching the Peer to Patent program .... 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. A New York law school helped develop the Peer to Patent program that will help ease the workload of "underpaid and overwhelmed" patent examiners. The pilot program will officially begin on May 12.
I've been quiet today because I was "attending" (teleconference) a brainstorming session about it. I learned a lot, and at the same time I wanted to try to input what I think you'd want said. What I wanted to know, personally, was whether the USPTO was serious about improving, or whether input would be used in counterproductive ways or even ignored. The answer to that seems to depend to some extent on how well things get organized, because a large part of the problem is patent examiners are seriously buried and can only give a set amount of time to each application. This project isn't about getting rid of software patents; but it is about trying to prevent stupid patents from issuing in the first place. I'm not sure that means there will be fewer patents. Think of the Blackberry story, and then imagine that you could prevent it from ever happening. Here is the draft of the Peer to Patent Project proposal. This Friday, May 12, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) will hold a briefing on the project. It's open to the public, but you need to let them know you want to attend, if you do. The May 12 briefing will be held at the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) from 9:00 a.m. to noon in the agency’s Madison building, 600 Dulany Street, Alexandria, VA. For further details about the meeting, please visit http://www.uspto.gov.
The May 12 briefing will be hosted by John Doll, Commissioner for Patents, USPTO, and Jay Lucas, Deputy Commissioner for Patent Examination Policy.
Professor Beth Noveck,
Director, Institute for Information Law & Policy,
New York Law School, who heads the project, will lead the presentation on the Peer Review Pilot Project along with Manny W. Schecter, Associate General Counsel, Intellectual Property for IBM, and Marc Ehrlich, Counsel, Patent Portfolio Management, Intellectual Property Law, IBM.
The purpose of the May 12, 2006 briefing is to provide greater in-depth analysis of the peer review pilot project as well as answer the question of what constitutes valid prior art.
The represents a kick-off of the peer review project and the effort to move from proposal to working prototype with a launch at the beginning of 2007.
For updates on the project and to subscribe to the new listserv, please visit http://dotank.nyls.edu/communitypatent . It is not by any means too late to input your ideas.
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| Authored by: SpaceLifeForm on Tuesday, May 09 2006 @ 07:51 PM EDT |
| Please use HTML for posting links.
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You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner. [ Reply to This | # ]
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- SCOX - Authored by: tiger99 on Wednesday, May 10 2006 @ 08:03 AM EDT
- Pro-DRM FUD from Cellular News - $4.4 billion loss due to piracy? - Authored by: TiddlyPom on Wednesday, May 10 2006 @ 07:46 AM EDT
- The Complete, Unquestionable, And Total Failure of Information Security - Authored by: nerd6 on Wednesday, May 10 2006 @ 07:48 AM EDT
- Sun - Authored by: jplatt39 on Wednesday, May 10 2006 @ 08:09 AM EDT
- Reich on net neutrality - Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, May 10 2006 @ 09:32 AM EDT
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| Authored by: joef on Tuesday, May 09 2006 @ 08:24 PM EDT |
I've come to the conclusion that the move to "user fees" that has
taken place over the last few decades has been counterproductive for agencies
whose duty it is to serve the public. Glaring examples in the recent news have
been the USPTO and the FDA. They are funded b the industries they regulate, to
the detriment of the public they are supposed to serve.
I have no issue with the user fees per se, but they should go into the general
fund. The agencies' budgets should be obligations of the general fund without
regard to the fees that the agencies generate. This would isolate the agencies
from the need to pander to the industries being regulated. Perhaps an activity
like the GAO or CBO should be the only ones to examine the relationship between
the fees and the level of activity of the agencies. This would reduce the
regulated industries' impact upon the approval processes.
[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: dwheeler on Tuesday, May 09 2006 @ 08:28 PM EDT |
| Let's say you note prior art, and the examiner fails to understand it and grants
the patent anyway. Is the prior art now inadmissable in court? If so, then it
may be too dangerous to note prior art. I think it's critical to state IN
WRITING that any court can ALWAYS re-review prior art, even if a patent examiner
was told about it.
On the other direction, if there's obvious prior art, can
this information be the basis of a fraud case? It is absurd that people can
blatantly patent ideas created by others; this needs to stop, with teeth.
[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Jude on Tuesday, May 09 2006 @ 08:36 PM EDT |
I think the effect of patents on our economy can be compared to the effect of
powerful drugs on our bodies. Correct use of good drugs can bring great
benefits, but incorrect use or bad drugs can cause great harm.
Think about what would happen if the FDA approved drugs the way the patent
office granted patents.
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| Authored by: mobrien_12 on Tuesday, May 09 2006 @ 09:25 PM EDT |
Ah what a great idea... so many stupid things could be stopped. Apple could
stop Creative from patenenting the Ipod music interface long after the Ipod was
introduced. No patents on the double click. Nobody taking a well known idea,
sticking the word "internet" in it, and patenting it.
Now what company do you think is going to throw a hissy fit over this? My bet
is the one who loves software patents and files thousands of them a year but
keeps getting sued for infringing on them. [ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: jseigh on Tuesday, May 09 2006 @ 10:10 PM EDT |
There's one company out there which basically specializes in at least one press
release per week touting their patented technology. Except AFAICT they've
patented something that's been around for 30 years. I don't think they'd be too
happy with attempts to invalidate their patent.[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, May 09 2006 @ 10:14 PM EDT |
Quandry:
Programmers are advised not to examine patents, because if they do so and then
infringe on a patent at any point later in their career, they may be liable for
'willful' infringement.
At the same time, programmers are probably the only ones truly qualified to put
software patents under scrutiny, find solid pieces of prior art, etc.
How can we do Peer to Patent without exposing ourselves to additional personal
liability, when the inevitable patent troll (or honest mistake) slips through?[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: rdc3 on Tuesday, May 09 2006 @ 10:35 PM EDT |
Groklaw shows the power of community-based legal research into technical
issues. I think this bodes well for the peer-to-patent proposal, particularly
if lessons from Groklaw can help shape it.
The peer-to-patent process
will not solve all of the problems associated with software patents. However,
if the result is to limit software patents to ones that are
truly inventive,
and to limit the scope of the claims of even those, a lot will have been
achieved.
[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, May 09 2006 @ 11:53 PM EDT |
Couldn't it be argued that you had an opportunity to object via the PubPat
system, and if you didn't do so then, you've somehow waived your rights to
object later?[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: Anonymous on Wednesday, May 10 2006 @ 02:24 AM EDT |
The USPTO gets paid by the patents that it *approves*. Patent Examiners'
ability to pay their mortgages is dependent on how fast they can ink their
rubber stamp. Until that's fixed, I call PR exercise on this.[ Reply to This | # ]
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| Authored by: sgtrock on Wednesday, May 10 2006 @ 09:18 AM EDT |
Oh? Then how come this was posted on
Mini-Microsoft's blog back in March?
"In the meantime, the
discussion of how you'd sell Vista in 30-seconds to a non-techy consumer hasn't
come up with much Abbie-understandable reasons other than "cooler games!" Sure,
Abbie probably spends a lot of time with solitaire and minesweeper, so that's
good. But most of it focuses either on issues so deep and technical that the
average consumer is going to shrug and say, "Hell, I don't think I need any of
that!" or on issues that make you think that XP is a ticking time-bomb of
unstable code ready to explode 1s and 0s over anyone who looks at it wrong. And
as for Alpha Geeks and super-users, it sounds like LUA is going to be a daily
pain in the patootie.
The good news? Well, we've got plenty of time to
conjure up reasons why Vista is going to be better than XP in a way that anyone
can understand and agree with. Plus $500 million to spend doing it."
Looks
to me like Vista is going to have an uphill sales battle. Of course, I thought
the same thing about Win2k, but that eventually prevailed as WinXP. We'll see
how things go.[ Reply to This | # ]
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