A cool pilot project at the Patent Office
The US Patent and Trademark Office is doing something interesting, innovative, and cool. As a former patent examiner, this comes as a tremendous shock to me, but I digress.
During the process of determining whether an invention is patentable, the examiner must compare the invention to everything done before in that particular field; the search of the prior art in that technology includes not only prior patents, but any disclosure, written or otherwise, in any language, anywhere on Earth, from any point in the past. For example, if the invention was described on a Japanese TV show in 1958, it can't be patented.
That's a huge body of prior art to search; even though practicality demands that the search is generally limited to printed materials only, any prior disclosure or knowledge of the invention constitutes a bar to patentability. For certain fields, like software, very little of the technology is actually published. This makes the examiner's job all the more difficult.
To address this problem, the PTO has started a pilot project which solicits public input on an invention and its relevant prior art. The application will be published on the PTO's website, and the public will be invited to submit comments in a Wiki format regarding any prior art the examiner may have missed. The commenters will also be rated on a scale which will impart a kind of "authority" to each one; the comments from more authoritative experts will then percolate to the surface and become part of the examiner's inquiry.
This is potentially huge. If it's done right, it could mean a lot of patent applications never make it out the door; I can easily see a large number of applications being shot down because of some publication or public use of the invention that the PTO wouldn't otherwise know about.
By tightening the standards of patentability, the patents that actually do issue will have a stronger presumption of validity behind them; this will reduce the number of patents that end up in litigation, since fewer invalid ones will be issued.
What a concept: the government doing something that's both cutting edge and more efficient.