|
|
|||||
Peer to Patent Australia recruits volunteer prior art searchers
The
Peer to Patent
project has already earned its place in history. It was explicitly
cited as inspiration for the open government initiative in the Obama
administration, which recently released a comprehensive directive
(available as a
PDF)
covering federal agencies. The founder of the project, law professor
Beth Noveck, began implementation of the directive as Deputy CTO in
the US government. But I've been wondering, along with many other
people, where Peer to Patent itself is going.
It's encouraging to hear that a new pilot has started in Australia and has gathered a small community of volunteer patent art seekers. You can check out the official site and its Wikipedia page. Because Australia is much smaller in population than the US and sees much less patent activity, the scope of the pilot is smaller but seems to be chugging along nicely. The pilot started on December 9 and plans to run for six months, offering 40 patents for review in the areas of software and business methods (the same ones as the US Peer to Patent project). Among participating patent applicants are IBM, General Electric, Hewlett-Packard, Yahoo!, CSIRO, and Aristocrat. Right now, 15 patents are posted, each has at least one volunteer reviewer, and one boasts two suggestions for potential prior art. Professor Brian Fitzgerald of the Queensland University of Technology, the Project Leader of Peer to Patent Australia, says, "Peer to Patent allows people from anywhere to plug into the patent examination process and to add what value they can. And from what we have seen in the US, it works: examiners are relying on the Peer to Patent prior art notifications. Our aim is to help build an international platform for the project as well as embed its benefits within the Australian patent system. We ask you to join the Australian project and help contribute to the development of Peer to Patent on a worldwide basis." While the U.S. pilot is undergoing evaluation, Peer to Patent's executive directory Mark Webbink says, "Signs are good for a potential restart of the program some time in 2010. Dave Kappos, the Under Secretary of Commerce and Director of the USPTO, has long been a supporter of Peer to Patent, and the prior art contributions appear to be proving useful. The worldwide economy produced some drag on program expansion when the UK Intellectual Property Office delayed its anticipated pilot. However, the Japan Patent Office, which previously ran its own peer review pilot, now appears interested in expanding its program. IP Australia and Queensland University of Technology are to be commended for moving on the pilot so quickly." Brian Fitzgerald says that China and other Asian countries are watching Japan and Australia with interest. I have followed Peer to Patent since fairly early drafts of the proposal, have written about it frequently, and believe it is both viable and necessary. The recent ruling against Microsoft Office shows that patents in software, at least, are way out of control. Prior art cannot in itself solve a broken system, but a robust examination process can at least make applicants think twice about trying to exert ownership over routine concepts such as separating a document's markup from its content. (That's the purpose of markup in the first place.) Incidentally, Australia has its own version of the famous Bilski patent case ending the practice of business patents, Grant v Commissioner of Patents. In fact, the progress Peer to Patent has made in many countries proves my faith in it. Just think about the inertia of government agencies and the impenetrability of both the individual patent application and the patent process as a whole. Who would imagine, putting all those barriers together, that Peer to Patent could have accomplished so much already? We're not on Internet time here, but on policy time. Peer to Patent is still a baby, and with enough care and feeding it can thrive and grow strong.
|
|||||
© 2012, O'Reilly Media, Inc. (707) 827-7019(800) 889-8969 All trademarks and registered trademarks appearing on oreilly.com are the property of their respective owners. |
|||||
Comments: 3
Kevin R. Guidry [24 December 2009 01:06 PM]
Andy, your posts display very funny in Google Reader, making them difficult to read. There are a lot of funny line breaks.
Merry Christmas!
Mark Nowotarski [28 December 2009 11:53 AM]
We were very active in the US peer to patent as both inventors and searchers.
I'm a little disappointed that the Australia Peer to Patent appears to be a carbon copy of the US initiative. I think there is a lot of room for improvement on the basic idea and would like to see the basic concept developed a lot more.
Mark Webbink [28 December 2009 04:15 PM]
Budget constraints in launching the Australian pilot did not allow for material alterations of the basic Peer-to-Patent web platform. As for the U.S. pilot, it is presently undergoing evaluation by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Input for that evaluation is being gathered from a wide range of applicants, practitioners, peer reviewers, and examiners. In addition, the USPTO has issued an open invitation to anyone wishing to comment on existing patent quality initiatives or to suggest new ones (http://www.uspto.gov/patents/law/notices/74fr65093.pdf).