Peer-to-Patent allows public to find prior art
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(InfoWorld) - U.S. technology vendors submitted five patent applications for last Friday's launch of a Web site that allows the public to review proposals before patents are granted. Less than a week later, the public had submitted claims of previous inventions that could invalidate each one. The prior art submissions may not pan out, but if they do, that's OK with the technology vendors. Prior art refers to existing inventions. "It's not a negative if we don't get a patent that we don't deserve," said Manny Schecter, associate general counsel for IBM Corp., an early supporter of the Peer-to-Patent project. "We don't want to have a false sense of security that we have a valuable asset that we don't really have." Peer-to-Patent's exposure of prior art will weed out patents that would likely face challenges down the line, added Curt Rose, associate general counsel for Hewlett-Packard Co. "We don't want to get patents issued that aren't valid," he said. "That's just a waste of time and money and resources for us and everybody else." Peer-to-Patent is a year-long pilot program offered through the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and New York Law School's Institute for Information Law and Policy. The pilot, which covers patent applications for computer architecture, software and information security, launched June 15 with the support of several tech vendors. IBM, HP, Intel Corp. and Red Hat Inc. each submitted patent applications to help launch the program. The program has multiple goals, chief among them to weed out invalid patents, said Beth Noveck, a professor at the New York Law School who originally proposed the program in July 2005. Many tech vendors have pushed Congress to fix what they see as a broken patent system, and one of the biggest concerns is that overworked USPTO examiners grant too many undeserving patents. One goal is to "improve the quality of patents by providing the patent office with more and better information about inventions for which applications are filed," Noveck said. "We want to prevent the issuance of undeserving patent claims." Another goal is to make USPTO "more accountable and transparent to the technology community," she added. Supporters of Peer-to-Patent may be the first example of social networking being used in a government application. "It brings the strength of the community to the patent examination process," said HP's Rose. "So the examiners can make the best examination they can, which ultimately results in better patents." In the first week, IBM's patent application in the pilot, called "database staging area read-through or forced flush with dirty notification," has generated four claims of prior art as well as some discussion on a message board attached to the application. Peer-to-Patent allows the public to discuss patent applications and upload examples of prior art. Then, members of the site select the top examples of prior art for each patent application and the top 10 are forwarded to USPTO. One advantage for companies using the pilot is that they will have their patents reviewed within a year, instead of the traditional four-year waiting period. Under Noveck's original proposal, inventors who decided not to use the Peer-to-Patent review would get patents that were valid for a shorter length of time than those who used Peer-to-Patent, but that's not part of the pilot. The pilot has gained praise from some members of the open-source software community, in addition to large tech vendors. Bad patents hurt open-source and free software projects partly because those projects often aren't part of prior art searches at the USPTO, said Pamela Jones, founder and editor of Groklaw , a Web site focused on open-source and free software legal issues. No open-source and free software prior art database exists, and it's now nearly impossible to write major new software packages without getting into a patent dispute, Jones said on a video on the Peer-to-Patent site. "I think of this project as spraying insecticide on stupid patents before they can multiply," Jones added. "And your knowledge of prior art is the bug spray."
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Turns out Apple already has a patent for the iPhone. Whoops.
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As part of a series looking at Internet and intellectual property law, Clarke Douglas Walton, an attorney and former VP of an SEM firm, discusses trademark usage in PPC advertising, the DMCA, and future legal issues on the horizon for search marketers.
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(InfoWorld) - IBM will publish its patent applications online to share their details with the world and, perhaps, reduce the flood of patent infringement lawsuits. IBM made the change in corporate policy public Tuesday after a two-month long research project this summer involving experts in law, academia, government and technology. The change in policy "is designed to foster integrity, a healthier environment for innovation, and mutual respect for intellectual property rights," IBM said in a statement. It encouraged others in "the patent community" to follow its example. IBM believes that if it is clear and up-front about what technology it is patenting, such disclosure should reduce the risk of patent disputes and lower the chance that its innovations will infringe the patents of others. In this era of technology innovations, the number of patent filings have swelled and government agencies, such as the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, have trouble keeping up with applications. "Those systems now deal with growing numbers of questionable patent applications and patent lawsuits," IBM stated. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office makes filings public 18 months after they are submitted and offers only a two-month window for limited public comment on the patents, said IBM spokesman Ari Fishkind, at the technology company's headquarters in Armonk, New York. Under IBM's new policy, the company will establish a six-month window for public comments and encourage more active dialogue about the patents. This will put others on notice of what IBM is planning to patent, but also give other inventors the opportunity to tell IBM that they already hold a patent on what IBM proposes to patent, Fishkind said. "This is a way to get more people involved, like in an open source community," he said. The policy is intended to make IBM patent applicants responsible for the quality and clarity of their applications and to clearly establish ownership of the patent. IBM also contends that business methods that don't have particular technical merit should not be patentable. The patent policy was developed by a panel of about 50 experts working throughout May and June in a collaborative process conducted on an online wiki. A wiki is a Web site at which several people have the ability to write and edit a document online. "The intellectual property regime in this country is not functioning in the best interests of society and of innovators," said Steven Weber, a professor of international studies and political science at the University of California at Berkeley and a member of the group that developed the policy. The volume of patent litigation has grown with the growth of new technology innovations and the tendency of courts to expand the definition of what can be patented, Weber said. There have also been instances in which companies have used vague patent language as leverage to sue others for patent infringement and reap millions in settlements. If the patent process is more open, the risk of litigation will be lower, which saves all parties money spent on litigating patent disputes. "Litigation is a dead weight loss" on everybody, Weber said.
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Patent infringement decision leads to one of the largest patent decisions in history.
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In an effort to stem the spread of software patents in Europe, the Open Source Risk Management (OSRM) group has begun documenting the sources of innovation claimed by such patents.
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Last week, the US Patent and Trademark Office announced its official support of a Web site whose purpose will be to encourage citizens to assess the validity of patent applications for themselves, and issue challenges where necessary.  The notice gives the go-ahead to a New York Law School project to build an open-source-like patent review community.
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In what may be the first action of its kind in the U.S., a lawsuit has been filed to enforce an open-source license.
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UKPO considers Gowers recommendations The UK Patent Office is considering how it might implement some of the recommendations of the Gowers Review of intellectual property law in the UK. One of the suggestions Gowers made in the report was that the patent authorities should evaluate how peer review might improve the patent checking process.â¦
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The patent office sided with the Public Patent Foundation, which argued that several examples of so-called &quot;prior art&quot; were in existence when Microsoft sought to patent FAT.
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Google has applied for a patent for methods and technology that can be used to find and extract text from images.
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Still handing out daft patents, though The US patent system is set for a thorough review, according to reports, with the aim of improving the quality of patents awarded, and thus reducing the number of patent lawsuits.â¦
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A company finds a sneaky new way to silence security researchers: Claim that defeating its products infringes on patents. Commentary by Jennifer Granick.
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While the US Congress continues debate on new patent reform legislation that would likely limit the amount that aggrieved parties could receive in infringement suits, the Supreme Court has agreed with a Justice Dept. request to hear a critical case. Its outcome, one way or the other, may not only impact technology patent law but also how manufacturers mix Intel and AMD parts, and also how - believe it or not - how digital music stores sell MP3 tracks.
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You don&#39;t have to be Google to challenge the way Wall Street manages initial public offerings. A little southwest Virginia biotechnology company has just gone public using the same innovative &quot;open IPO&quot; process as Google.
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(InfoWorld) - If you've ever dreamed up an ingenious new invention and then wondered if someone else has already made it, Google's new patent search offering is for you. The new site, www.google.com/patents, lets anyone search for U.S. patents by keyword, patent number, inventor, and filing date. Users can view a scanned image of the original patent and zoom in on pages. The main search page displays five different random patents each time the page is visited. Recent inventions that popped up include toy skunk, pocket protector, toupee, and doll having delayed wetting and crying action. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) already allows anyone to search its site for patent documents. But Google's offering may have some advantages. "The existing Web sites have patents that you can view so it's not that the information isn't there. The problem is finding it and that's where Google's expertise comes in," said Mike Overy, secretary for the Wessex Round Table of Inventors, an inventors club in England. Overy formerly developed products for Nokia and is now a freelance inventor. Google said that like its Web search technology, the patent search site uses a number of different signals to evaluate how relevant each patent is to a user's query and then determines results algorithmically. The USPTO is not the only patent office to offer an online patent search facility. The European Patent Office also hosts such a service, covering patents from European countries, the U.S., Canada and other patent authorities. Overy finds that database good but not very user friendly, he said. Discovering existing patents is extremely important for inventors, Overy said. While Google's new offering may ease what is often an incredibly tedious job, it may not be able to fully solve the problem, he said. One issue inherent in new inventions is naming them. "If you've invented what you think is the first gizmo whatsit and you type that into a search engine, you won't find much because the other person who invented it called it something different," he said. Google's patent search covers 7 million patents. The database doesn't include patents issued in the last few months but Google "looks forward to expanding our coverage in the future," according to the frequently asked questions section of its site. Although Google's database only lists U.S. patents for now, the company said it hopes to expand the patent offices it includes and languages it supports. Presumably the site will one day allow users to save and print patents too: a note at the bottom of a posting about the new service on the Google blog says that a reference to saving and printing has been removed since Google is still working on the capabilities.
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In an attempt to quell increasing criticism over the nation's patent system, the Bush Administration is looking to make changes to require more specific information, and allow the public to comment.