ON US PATENT OFFICE'S "ALMOST" WEB 2.0 INITIATIVES

THE HARDEST STEP

The New York Times has an article by John Markoff titled "US Office joins effort to improve software patents"  that provides some faint hope that our patent system may yet be tweaked to meet the realities of the new century with this first, tentative step. 

In a post a few days ago, I'd highlighted several reports that illustrate how the US patent system, which at one point was an important engine of economic growth, may actually be slowing growth as we start the new century in earnest.

As the Times article notes:

"The United States Patent and Trademark Office plans to announce today that it will cooperate with open-source software developers on three initiatives that it says will improve the quality of software patents.

The patent office has come under increasing pressure in recent years from critics who contend that it issues patents without adequate investigation of earlier inventions. As a result, conflicts over published patents have loosed an avalanche of intellectual property litigation."

Specifically, the USPTO will take up three initiatives:

"Two of the initiatives would rely on recently developed Internet technologies. An open patent review program would set up a system on the patent office Web site where visitors could submit search criteria and subscribe to electronic alerts about patent applications in specific areas.

The third initiative is focused on the creation of a patent quality index that would serve as a tool for patent applicants to use in writing their applications. It is based on work done by R. Polk Wagner, an intellectual property expert at the University of Pennsylvania."

Groklaw has a good summary post on the announcement with links to many additional sources, including the press release from IBM. 

TechDirt has an interesting take on the "Patent Quality Index":

"It's the Patent Quality Index, which claims to be a quick and dirty algorithmic method of giving your patent application a quality score. The idea is that patent applicants can run their patent through this system before they submit it for real, and can be quickly told that their patent is lame.

Of course, that all depends on how the PQI works -- and so far, that's still a big secret. It's also not clear if it's just patent applicants who will use this system, or if patent examiners will also use the PQI to "score" patent applications. Obviously, that might be tempting since patent examiners don't scale, but it probably puts way too much faith in a algorithm."

That the effort incorporates a more open, open-sourced, transparent review system with interested parties and email notification, is a good first step.  Although obviously more could be done with RSS feeds and tags and the like, but that would be too Web 2.0 for the USPTO.

Also, the process seems to need more parties involved than the ones currently mentioned like IBM.

Interestingly, ComputerWorld reminds us that:

"Today's initiative coincides with the annual release by the patent office of a list of the companies with the most patents in 2005. For the 13th consecutive year, IBM received the most U.S. patents, with 2,941. Canon Kabushiki Kaisha was ranked second with 1,828, and Hewlett-Packard Co. was third with 1,797."

CNET notes that IBM has lead in US patents for 13 years running now.

Overall, the USPTO initiatives do not address the shortcomings of the overall system, which are prevalent not just on the software front, but across the breadth and depth of technology.

But it is a start, and an indication that the USPTO is listening. 

Whether the USPTO's actions,

a) actually begin to address the real issues or
b) are just an attempt to publicly mollify critics with little meaningful change, or
c) are an attempt to pre-empt actions for change by external parties in Washington and elsewhere, remains to be seen.

We all need to stay very, very tuned.

Comments

[Johannes Ernst]

Why not marry it with Slashdot?

http://www.alwayson-network.com/comments.php?id=5763_0_5_0_C

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