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Yesterday I spent part of the afternoon at a US Patent & Trademark Office roundtable discussion on using crowdsourcing to improve the patent examination process. Thanks to Chris Wong for looping me in and helping to organize the event. If you're interested, you can watch the whole video here. I was there not as an expert in patents, but as someone who represents lots of small startup internet companies facing patent issues, and as someone who spends a lot of time on the problem of how to solve challenges through collaborative processes (basically everything USV invests in). Here are my slides: And I'll just highlight two important points: First: why do we care about this? Because (generally speaking) small internet companies typically see more harm than benefit from the patent system:
And second, there are many ways to contemplate "crowdsourcing" with regard to patent examinations. In the most straightforward sense, the PTO could construct a way for outsiders to submit prior art on pending patent applications -- this is the model pioneered by
Share Dialog
Yesterday I spent part of the afternoon at a US Patent & Trademark Office roundtable discussion on using crowdsourcing to improve the patent examination process. Thanks to Chris Wong for looping me in and helping to organize the event. If you're interested, you can watch the whole video here. I was there not as an expert in patents, but as someone who represents lots of small startup internet companies facing patent issues, and as someone who spends a lot of time on the problem of how to solve challenges through collaborative processes (basically everything USV invests in). Here are my slides: And I'll just highlight two important points: First: why do we care about this? Because (generally speaking) small internet companies typically see more harm than benefit from the patent system:
And second, there are many ways to contemplate "crowdsourcing" with regard to patent examinations. In the most straightforward sense, the PTO could construct a way for outsiders to submit prior art on pending patent applications -- this is the model pioneered by
Set up a simple, public "uspto-developers" google group and invite interested developers to join the discussion there.
Stand up a basic API for patent search that sites like Ask Patents and others could use (they specifically asked for this, and already have an active community).
That would be a really simple way to start, would be guaranteed to bear fruit in the near term, and would also help guide subsequent steps Or, to put it in more buzzwordy terms:
It felt like a productive discussion -- I appreciate how hard it is to approach an old problem in a new way, and get the sense that the PTO is taking a real stab at it.
Set up a simple, public "uspto-developers" google group and invite interested developers to join the discussion there.
Stand up a basic API for patent search that sites like Ask Patents and others could use (they specifically asked for this, and already have an active community).
That would be a really simple way to start, would be guaranteed to bear fruit in the near term, and would also help guide subsequent steps Or, to put it in more buzzwordy terms:
It felt like a productive discussion -- I appreciate how hard it is to approach an old problem in a new way, and get the sense that the PTO is taking a real stab at it.
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