Last week at the Media Lab, we had the pleasure of hosting USPTO Director Dave Kappos and several members of the PTO's senior staff, to brainstorm ways that we might use technology in creative ways to help the patent office work better, and to help the patent system work better in general. The meeting was organized by Beth Noveck, who is just beginning her stint as a visiting professor at Lab -- among other things, Beth and her former student Chris Wong are the ones behind the Peer to Patent project, which crowdsources aspects of the patent review process. The goal of the day was to come away from the meeting with a handful of concrete projects that we (at the Media Lab, and at other institutions) could start to hack on. As most people know, there are a lot of issues with the patent system, especially with software patents. Too many meaningless software patents get issued, and too much needless litigation ensues. It's a drag on the industry, and it's particularly tough on new companies. Just this week, EFF launched a campaign to address exactly these issues. While EFF is pursuing legislative means to address the problem, the focus of this workshop was to look at what could be done in the current context, using tech as a lever. There are a whole lot of opportunities to bring more and better information into the process, to reduce the burden on patent examiners, to increase the quality of approved patents, and to make better use of the patent corpus as a teaching & learning tool. And in general, I'm a fan of finding hacks to hard problems (like Twitter's recent "patent hack"
Much better search tools (USPTO website's bad, Google's patent search is just so-so).
A "prior art" tool, which basically takes the patent database, and lets people annotate it with examples of prior art
A system that indicates how often a patent has been used in litigation (i.e., a warning system of a patent that is often been used for trolling).
A "dashboard" of sorts that details claims that are rejected on re-exam (something like 80% of patents that get re-examined have claims rejected -- which is scary when you think about it). Such a dashboard should highlight patents that were changed, how frequently such re-exams lead to changes, and perhaps even "scores" patent examiners for how often claims they approved get rejected on re-exam.
A better and more public version of the PAIR system, including one that shows just how many "final rejections" a patent received before it was approved (you'd be amazed)
An "expert" database of techies willing to testify during patent trials on the obviousness of a patent or on prior art -- making it easier for defendants to bolster their case with evidence of invalidity of patents.
I don't know if there's any "technology" here, but something that tries to unwind the shell companies that make up most patent trolls to find out who's really behind many patent trolls (seriously, a bunch of them are so hidden you have no clue who actually owns the patent).
Coming into the meeting the PTO identified the following three areas of interest:
Quality of Information: how can applicants and examiners access more and better data sources, and have data more interlinked throughout the lifecycle.
Better analysis of applications: cross-referencing, crowd-sourcing, automated analysis.
Customer interaction: the patent application process involves a tremendous amount of back-and-forth
Without going through the whole list of ideas from the workshop, here are the ideas/topics/opportunities that felt most promising to me:
Reframing patents as building blocks -- a primary purpose of patents is to bring understanding of inventions into the public realm. However, in practice this doesn't work too well. Making the patent database more linkable and searchable would be a first step. Requiring diagrams to be submitted in an open digital format, and/or requiring photos to be photographed from pre-defined angles would help. Another idea was map products in the marketplace back to the underlying patents, as sort of a "view source" for products -- I love the idea of that. In general, there was a consensus that there's a need and an opportunity to reframe the patent corpus as a basis for innovation, not just as a means of protecting individual rights.
Improving the pre-submission process -- a "turbotax for patents", i.e., a web app (or an ecosystem of apps built on top of a PTO API) that would walk filers through the process; machine-learning tools that could analyse applications based on the patent database.
Incentives -- we spent a fair amount of time talking about incentives -- in particular, how to encourage participation in finding prior art (perhaps by recruiting filers to find prior art on other patents, offering, say, speedier review of their application as a reward) , and also opportunities to encourage filers to leverage peer-review more effectively (say, by offering speedier review if they agree to do so). Things like building a reputation system which more clearly identifies "awesome" patents (those that have been cited many times), and lame ones (those that have been repeatedly and successfully challenged) and "rogues" -- trolls and others who are abusing the system.
Peer review and engaging existing communities of expertise. There was talk about how the PTO might engage with communities like the ones around StackExchange, which are already bringing tremendous community resources to bear towards answering technical questions. A sticky point in the application process is *when* peer review can happen (currently only after the point of public disclosure -- 18 months after initial application) -- so one challenge is thinking about systems might open up opportunities for more peer review and/or crowdsourced assistance of some kind earlier int he process. Also,
Here's what ended up on the whiteboard (which of course misses most of the color from the conversation but gets some of the ideas across):
I'll post an update once more concrete plans emerge and things start to happen. The plan is for several groups at the lab to peel off and start working on pieces of this. In the meantime, if you have any suggestions or thoughts, post them in the comments here, or tweet at: Beth Noveck, Chris Wong, Margot Kaminski, Jason Schultz, Joi Ito, or me.
This morning started out in such a great way. I'm on a mailing list at the Media Lab called "awesome", and this morning Kasia Hayden sent around a link to this incredible piece of creative work: It's a marriage proposal presented as a "live lip-dub" of Bruno Mars' "Marry You". Basically a live music video, staged on a quiet street in Portlandia, from the back of a slowly moving car. I watched probably 10 times today and it still brings a big smile to my face. It's an incredible, touching, creative work, pulled together by a large cast of friends & family. It's really something. And in the past few days, it's been viewed a combined 2,000,000 times on youtube and vimeo. Of course, this made be think of copyright. First, I realized that part of what I liked so much about the video was the large-group choreography in the streets. It reminded me of something, but I couldn't remember what. Then I remembered: the awesome scene in Ferris Bueller's Day Off when Ferris sings "Twist and Shout" on a parade float in downtown Chicago and everyone in the city starts dancing. This part is where it gets really good (it should start at the right place, but if it doesn't, skip to 2:25): This raised two issues for me:
Is the wedding proposal fair use under US copyright law? Or is it infringing? I'm not an expert on this, but my read is that it's not fair use and therefor is infringing. Who knows if the creators cleared the rights to the song, probably not. But this is a) such awesome creative work and b) nothing but positive towards the brand and market awareness for the song itself. Even if you don't believe this should count as fair use, it's the kind of thing where a more accessible / understandable rights clearing & licensing system would really make things easier and foster more creativity like this.
I'm pretty sure the Ferris Bueller clip is infringing. The first clip I found of the Twist & Shout scene was here, but the actual Youtube clip had been killed, serving this notice:
I was able to find the clip I included above, but I assume that might disappear at some point as well. Which is unfortunate, because as matter of culture, it's really helpful to link to clips like this. I don't know if there would be a reasonable way to provide the raw material (the way that youtube does, sort of) which would, under current law, facilitate fair use while limiting non-fair use.
Regardless, this video made my morning, and reminded me of something that Eben Moglen said last week at #f2c:
"The way innovation really happens is that you provide young people with opportunities to create on an infrastructure which allows them to hack the real world and share the results"
Here's to that.
Continuing my series of posts on this week's Freedom to Connect conference, here is Larry Lessig's closing keynote. It was a big thrill for me to see Larry deliver one of his trademark presentations in person. I remember the first time I saw one online: his Free Culture introduction from OSCON 2002. That was my first introduction to copyright as an issue and I remember being amazed at both what an interesting topic it was and at how engagingly Larry delivered it (he was the pioneer of fast-moving, slide-per-word presentations). Both the substance and style have been big influences on me. Larry has moved on from Copyright and Free Culture as core issues. In roughly 2007, after fighting the copyright fight for years, he came to realize that the fundamental problem preventing progress on copyright -- and on every other issue confronting us -- was corruption in government. The fact that policy and politics are moved by money, not by people. He sees this as the root problem, and is channeling all of his efforts through his new organization, the Root Strikers. I really like the way he's presenting his case: that everyone doesn't have to take on money-in-politics as their first issue, but it should be their second. In other words, focus on whatever primary issue moves you, but realize that this problem affects everything, and keep it as your #2 priority. I think this is a clever framing, and it really works for me. So, I would encourage you to watch this video -- it frames "the war against community broadband" as the first issue, backed by corruption as a underlying theme. Kudos to David Isenberg for putting on a great event this week -- I really enjoyed it, and having Larry as the closer was a great finish.
Last week at the Media Lab, we had the pleasure of hosting USPTO Director Dave Kappos and several members of the PTO's senior staff, to brainstorm ways that we might use technology in creative ways to help the patent office work better, and to help the patent system work better in general. The meeting was organized by Beth Noveck, who is just beginning her stint as a visiting professor at Lab -- among other things, Beth and her former student Chris Wong are the ones behind the Peer to Patent project, which crowdsources aspects of the patent review process. The goal of the day was to come away from the meeting with a handful of concrete projects that we (at the Media Lab, and at other institutions) could start to hack on. As most people know, there are a lot of issues with the patent system, especially with software patents. Too many meaningless software patents get issued, and too much needless litigation ensues. It's a drag on the industry, and it's particularly tough on new companies. Just this week, EFF launched a campaign to address exactly these issues. While EFF is pursuing legislative means to address the problem, the focus of this workshop was to look at what could be done in the current context, using tech as a lever. There are a whole lot of opportunities to bring more and better information into the process, to reduce the burden on patent examiners, to increase the quality of approved patents, and to make better use of the patent corpus as a teaching & learning tool. And in general, I'm a fan of finding hacks to hard problems (like Twitter's recent "patent hack"
Much better search tools (USPTO website's bad, Google's patent search is just so-so).
A "prior art" tool, which basically takes the patent database, and lets people annotate it with examples of prior art
A system that indicates how often a patent has been used in litigation (i.e., a warning system of a patent that is often been used for trolling).
A "dashboard" of sorts that details claims that are rejected on re-exam (something like 80% of patents that get re-examined have claims rejected -- which is scary when you think about it). Such a dashboard should highlight patents that were changed, how frequently such re-exams lead to changes, and perhaps even "scores" patent examiners for how often claims they approved get rejected on re-exam.
A better and more public version of the PAIR system, including one that shows just how many "final rejections" a patent received before it was approved (you'd be amazed)
An "expert" database of techies willing to testify during patent trials on the obviousness of a patent or on prior art -- making it easier for defendants to bolster their case with evidence of invalidity of patents.
I don't know if there's any "technology" here, but something that tries to unwind the shell companies that make up most patent trolls to find out who's really behind many patent trolls (seriously, a bunch of them are so hidden you have no clue who actually owns the patent).
Coming into the meeting the PTO identified the following three areas of interest:
Quality of Information: how can applicants and examiners access more and better data sources, and have data more interlinked throughout the lifecycle.
Better analysis of applications: cross-referencing, crowd-sourcing, automated analysis.
Customer interaction: the patent application process involves a tremendous amount of back-and-forth
Without going through the whole list of ideas from the workshop, here are the ideas/topics/opportunities that felt most promising to me:
Reframing patents as building blocks -- a primary purpose of patents is to bring understanding of inventions into the public realm. However, in practice this doesn't work too well. Making the patent database more linkable and searchable would be a first step. Requiring diagrams to be submitted in an open digital format, and/or requiring photos to be photographed from pre-defined angles would help. Another idea was map products in the marketplace back to the underlying patents, as sort of a "view source" for products -- I love the idea of that. In general, there was a consensus that there's a need and an opportunity to reframe the patent corpus as a basis for innovation, not just as a means of protecting individual rights.
Improving the pre-submission process -- a "turbotax for patents", i.e., a web app (or an ecosystem of apps built on top of a PTO API) that would walk filers through the process; machine-learning tools that could analyse applications based on the patent database.
Incentives -- we spent a fair amount of time talking about incentives -- in particular, how to encourage participation in finding prior art (perhaps by recruiting filers to find prior art on other patents, offering, say, speedier review of their application as a reward) , and also opportunities to encourage filers to leverage peer-review more effectively (say, by offering speedier review if they agree to do so). Things like building a reputation system which more clearly identifies "awesome" patents (those that have been cited many times), and lame ones (those that have been repeatedly and successfully challenged) and "rogues" -- trolls and others who are abusing the system.
Peer review and engaging existing communities of expertise. There was talk about how the PTO might engage with communities like the ones around StackExchange, which are already bringing tremendous community resources to bear towards answering technical questions. A sticky point in the application process is *when* peer review can happen (currently only after the point of public disclosure -- 18 months after initial application) -- so one challenge is thinking about systems might open up opportunities for more peer review and/or crowdsourced assistance of some kind earlier int he process. Also,
Here's what ended up on the whiteboard (which of course misses most of the color from the conversation but gets some of the ideas across):
I'll post an update once more concrete plans emerge and things start to happen. The plan is for several groups at the lab to peel off and start working on pieces of this. In the meantime, if you have any suggestions or thoughts, post them in the comments here, or tweet at: Beth Noveck, Chris Wong, Margot Kaminski, Jason Schultz, Joi Ito, or me.
This morning started out in such a great way. I'm on a mailing list at the Media Lab called "awesome", and this morning Kasia Hayden sent around a link to this incredible piece of creative work: It's a marriage proposal presented as a "live lip-dub" of Bruno Mars' "Marry You". Basically a live music video, staged on a quiet street in Portlandia, from the back of a slowly moving car. I watched probably 10 times today and it still brings a big smile to my face. It's an incredible, touching, creative work, pulled together by a large cast of friends & family. It's really something. And in the past few days, it's been viewed a combined 2,000,000 times on youtube and vimeo. Of course, this made be think of copyright. First, I realized that part of what I liked so much about the video was the large-group choreography in the streets. It reminded me of something, but I couldn't remember what. Then I remembered: the awesome scene in Ferris Bueller's Day Off when Ferris sings "Twist and Shout" on a parade float in downtown Chicago and everyone in the city starts dancing. This part is where it gets really good (it should start at the right place, but if it doesn't, skip to 2:25): This raised two issues for me:
Is the wedding proposal fair use under US copyright law? Or is it infringing? I'm not an expert on this, but my read is that it's not fair use and therefor is infringing. Who knows if the creators cleared the rights to the song, probably not. But this is a) such awesome creative work and b) nothing but positive towards the brand and market awareness for the song itself. Even if you don't believe this should count as fair use, it's the kind of thing where a more accessible / understandable rights clearing & licensing system would really make things easier and foster more creativity like this.
I'm pretty sure the Ferris Bueller clip is infringing. The first clip I found of the Twist & Shout scene was here, but the actual Youtube clip had been killed, serving this notice:
I was able to find the clip I included above, but I assume that might disappear at some point as well. Which is unfortunate, because as matter of culture, it's really helpful to link to clips like this. I don't know if there would be a reasonable way to provide the raw material (the way that youtube does, sort of) which would, under current law, facilitate fair use while limiting non-fair use.
Regardless, this video made my morning, and reminded me of something that Eben Moglen said last week at #f2c:
"The way innovation really happens is that you provide young people with opportunities to create on an infrastructure which allows them to hack the real world and share the results"
Here's to that.
Continuing my series of posts on this week's Freedom to Connect conference, here is Larry Lessig's closing keynote. It was a big thrill for me to see Larry deliver one of his trademark presentations in person. I remember the first time I saw one online: his Free Culture introduction from OSCON 2002. That was my first introduction to copyright as an issue and I remember being amazed at both what an interesting topic it was and at how engagingly Larry delivered it (he was the pioneer of fast-moving, slide-per-word presentations). Both the substance and style have been big influences on me. Larry has moved on from Copyright and Free Culture as core issues. In roughly 2007, after fighting the copyright fight for years, he came to realize that the fundamental problem preventing progress on copyright -- and on every other issue confronting us -- was corruption in government. The fact that policy and politics are moved by money, not by people. He sees this as the root problem, and is channeling all of his efforts through his new organization, the Root Strikers. I really like the way he's presenting his case: that everyone doesn't have to take on money-in-politics as their first issue, but it should be their second. In other words, focus on whatever primary issue moves you, but realize that this problem affects everything, and keep it as your #2 priority. I think this is a clever framing, and it really works for me. So, I would encourage you to watch this video -- it frames "the war against community broadband" as the first issue, backed by corruption as a underlying theme. Kudos to David Isenberg for putting on a great event this week -- I really enjoyed it, and having Larry as the closer was a great finish.
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