The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is swamped with patent applications and the patent examiners are drowning. At this point in history, it can easily take 24+ months for an application to get through the system, and quality is suffering. Beth Noveck leads the Peer to Patent initiative, a key effort to ease some of the pressure and vastly improve patent quality. The program pilot began 15 June, 2007 with the support of the USPTO, after a long year of planning and organizing. Its aim is to enable anyone with expertise to help vet applications for prior art, so the best possible patent is approved. (The following flow diagram comes from the Peer to Patent site.)
The program is already at work. Here's an example of one of the patents under peer review. (Sign up to participate.)
I've known Beth for a couple of years, since meeting her at the inaugural Government Open Source Conference in Portland. When the opportunity to interview her came up at Assignment Zero, I decided it was time to contribute. We never did get a chance to talk directly with her schedule and the pilot launch, but we managed to develop the interview over a few rounds of email. The interview is up on the Assignment Zero site, (with promises of future publication in Wired).
This is an important program and lots of companies that care about patent reform are sponsoring it. It is perhaps most interesting that so many of them are in the computing and software fields. But then we've also created the biggest mess for ourselves.
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