Meet Peer To Patent
p2p news / p2pnet: The US Patent and Trademark Office will begin using a peer review system to allow anyone to examine and review patent applications, says Daily Tech.
"The purpose of Peer to Patent is to find patents that have been issued for already made products or items that don’t properly qualify for a patent."
Those in the tech community, especially software developers have complained for years that "the USPTO usually does not have the manpower and time to thoroughly check every patent that comes into the office, [and] many are unjustly rubber stamped."
The organizers of Peer To Patent aren’t particularly worried about vandals either: "Competition will drive more information into the process. So long as people make valid arguments as rated by their peers, their personal agenda is irrelevant. Having many participants in the process dilutes the effect of any bad apples or unconstructive participants. Within any social reputation system, norms evolve to safeguard the quality of participation and we can expect something similar here.
As Beth Simone Noveck argues in "Peer to Patent": Collective Intelligence and Intellectual Property Reform:
The patent system is broken. The Constitution intended for patents to foster innovation and the promotion of progress in the useful arts. Instead, the Patent Office creates uncertainty and monopoly. Underpaid and overwhelmed examiners struggle under the burden of 350,000 applications per year and a mounting backlog of 600,000. Increasingly patents are approved for unmerited inventions.
What if we could make it easier to ensure that only the most worthwhile inventions got twenty years of monopoly rights?
What if we could offer a way to protect the inventor’s investment while still safeguarding the marketplace of ideas from bad inventions?
What if we could make informed decisions about scientifically complex problems before the fact, rather than trying to reform the system ex post?
What if we could harness collective intelligence to replace bureaucracy?
A step forward it seems.
Peer To Patent goes live on May 12th.
Alex H, p2pnet – Sydney, Australia
[Alex is an operations manager for an ATM (automatic teller machine) supplier and he specialises in infrastructure development and maintenance, and logistics. He's also an[other] active member of the Shareaza community. He also runs the Tech Loves Art blog on which you’ll find previous p2pnet posts as well as other good stuff.]
May 10th, 2006 at 5:29 pm
“The Constitution intended for patents to foster innovation and the promotion of progress in the useful arts.”
Isn’t it about time that the premise of the Contitution be challenged and not taken for granted. Of course no challenge will come from tech firms and their consultants.
After all, the creators of the Constitution thought that slavery was a good thing. Certainly the constitution founders were not as holy and as wise as they have been painted to be. Even the political system they set up is broken, a system where money and last name (Bush, Kennedy, Rockefeller, etc) is the determining factor as to who “represents” the people.
I personlly think that world progress will speed up if there were no patent system used to exploit the poorer and less technollogically advanced countries. Admittedly the patent system is good for a few.
Rafael Venegas
http://www.gvenegas.com
May 18th, 2006 at 7:46 am
Nice one…