IBM calls for patent reform / "WikiPriorArtia?" "IsThisPatentNovelOrNot.com?"
 | ||
 | Email weblog link | |
 | Discuss | |
 | Blog this |
Damien Stolarz
Apr. 12, 2005 12:29 AM
Permalink
URL: http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/0,39023165,39187609,00.htm...
"Because of the Internet, you can have thousands if not millions of individuals around the world share information about whether that invention actually took place years and years ago. You'll find volunteers and others interested in a public inspection of patents. The technology [currently] exists for that."
"We are saying that the granting of it, inspection of it, challenge, and post grant should be enhanced to take full advantage of new technologies and also the brain power of people around the world to make sure it is truly new things that are coming out."
-Jim Stallings, vice-president, intellectual property and standards, IBM
Interesting and practical - he suggests that it isn't just the responsibility of the patent office; that it should be the responsibility of the academic community and others.
I think I agree. What shall we call the collaberative site where people go to evaluate patents? WikiPatenta? WikiPriorArtica? IsThisPatentNovelOrNot.com?
Damien Stolarz is an inventor who's made different kinds of computers talk to each other for a decade. He co-founded Blue Falcon Networks to architect and develop networking software. In 2002, Damien created Robotarmy, a high-technology consulting firm.
Showing messages 1 through 2 of 2.
-
practical?
2005-04-12 01:34:36 jwenting [Reply | View]
Patents currently aren't made public until they've been granted, ensuring the invention isn't known to competitors and rivals until it's too late :)
What would you think about a process in which your ideas are presented to the entire world years before any protection is granted them all for the sake of enlisting the world in trying to find someone who used it in the past?
Would make it a lot easier for some Chinese (for example, they don't care about patents or IP in general after all) to start mass producing your invention before your patent ever makes it through the system (which might grant you some protection against those ripoffs at least in some markets).
| Showing messages 1 through 2 of 2. |
Return to weblogs.oreilly.com.
Weblog authors are solely responsible for the content and accuracy of their weblogs, including opinions they express, and O'Reilly Media, Inc., disclaims any and all liabililty for that content, its accuracy, and opinions it may contain.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons License.
The USPTO patent application examiners task could be made more reliable if the examiners could consult one or more public online registries that document cases of prior art and public discoveries. The online registries could provide a means for the public to retroactively point to cases of preexisting prior art for pending patent applications and a means to proactively document publicly known ideas and concepts. Although websites and digitally stored content in general is changeable, individual entries and changes in an online registry could be legally authenticated by means of digital timestamping ( http://www.rsasecurity.com/rsalabs/node.asp?id=2347 ). An online registry could be hosted by the USPTO as an adjunct to the existing online public patent and patent pending databases. The USPTO could also publicly recognize other individual registries hosted by third parties such as a commercial entity or a non-profit community similar to Wikipedia ( http://www.wikipedia.org/ ). An individual adding an entry to such a publicly online registry does not involve granting that individual any form of monopoly, therefore the action need not have any artificial barrier involving fees or payments. Would the existence of digitally timestamped public content overcome any objections by the USPTO to its citing as prior art? Has the USPTO any plans to add some form of publicly accessible feedback mechanism to the patent application process?