Cairns Blog

P2P: The Movie

Produced by IBM, this short movie with interviews with Chief Intellectual Property and Patent Counsel from IBM, GE, HP and others explains the Peer-to-Patent process, how it works and why an inventor will want to participate.  Check it out on YouTube here. 

Japan Announces Launch of Peer to Patent

IBM Japan, Ltd., Fujitsu Ltd., and other major IT companies plan to utilize outside specialists’ expertise for patent registration.  These companies will use a new patent examination system initiated by the Japan Patent Office (JPO) in June on a trial basis to have researchers and other experts who are knowledgeable about cutting-edge technology check whether their own inventions are suitable for patent registration.  The aim is to reduce the risk of patents becoming invalid because prior literature or other evidence is discovered after they are registered.
       

The new system adopted by the JPO is called “Community Patent Review.”  It covers disclosed patent applications chosen by IBM Japan or other companies after 18 months have passed since they were filed.  The JPO will recruit several hundred participants, including university researchers, to have them express their opinions about the trends for the latest papers presented at overseas academic conferences, the existence or absence of prior literature, and other issues, and it will make use of those opinions for patent examinations.

Ricoh Co., Ltd. also plans to use the new system.  Users of the new system can reduce the risk of another company claiming that a patent that has been obtained is invalid, and they may also be able to carry out licensing negotiations that are favorable to them.  This year dozens of patent applications centered on IT-related software and network technologies are expected to undergo examinations.

Currently, JPO examiners use databases to closely investigate prior cases Japan and overseas, such as existing patents and academic papers, and examine the novelty of patent applications.  However, as an official of the JPO’s examination policy planning section noted, the examiners “cannot fully investigate academic papers and manuals that are not included in databases.”  In 2006, there were 194 patents that became invalid because they were found to lack novelty.

The JPO will compile the results on the new system by the end of this year.  If it considers the new system to be effective, the JPO will call on more businesses to use it in the next fiscal year and thereafter.

New Applications on Peer-to-Patent

Peer-to-Patent is hosting a number of applications that need your expertise!  There are currently 12 applications covering a wide array of inventions, including one by world-famous cryptographer, Whitfield Diffie

Method for configuring a windfarm network
(Submitted by GE, available for review until February 21, 2008)

Technique to modify a timer
(Submitted by Intel, available for review until February 28, 2008)

Cross-cutting detection of event patterns
(Submitted by IBM, available for review until March 6, 2008)

User interface paradigm for manufacturing applications
(Submitted by GE, available for review until March 13, 2008)

Computer compliance system and method
(Submitted by GE, available for review until March 13, 2008)

Vector length tracking mechanism
(Submitted by Intel, available for review until March 27, 2008)

Method and apparatus for determining the switch port to which an end-node device is connected
(Submitted by HP, available for review until March 27, 2008)

System and method for managing virtual collaboration systems
(Submitted by HP, available for review until March 27, 2008)

Automatic tracking of user data and reputation checking
(Submitted by Microsoft, available for review until March 27, 2008)

Relocating page tables
(Submitted by Sun Microsystems, available for review until April 3, 2008)

Method for generating mnemonic random passcodes
(Submitted by Sun Microsystems, available for review until April 17, 2008)

Method for resource sharing in a multiple pipeline environment
(Submitted by IBM, available for review until April 17, 2008)

Descriptions for each of the applications can be found here.

The success of Peer-to-Patent depends upon participation from a knowledgeable, diverse community.  If you know anyone who might be interested in these applications, please forward this on to them or ask them to visit www.peertopatent.org!

One Laptop Per Child Hit with Patent Lawsuit

A Boston-based company has filed a claim in Nigeria - one of the countries where the laptops were due to be distributed - alleging that the OLPC has infringed a patent it holds on a 'four shift key' keyboard, which helps the computer handle multiple languages.  See story.

USPTO Patent Quality Cites Citizen Participation

Cross-posting from Peer-to-Patent blog:

The USPTO announced year-end quality results and published its Performance and Accountability Report.

Director Jon Dudas noted that "The USPTO will work tirelessly to ensure high quality agency actions, but we must make progress to ensure examiners are presented with applications that clearly depict the claimed invention and relevant prior art is presented to the examiner in a timely manner."

"Consistent with Director Dudas' direction, to encourage focused and complete information that allows examiners to make the best decisions when examining applications, the USPTO has initiated a number of improvements to better focus the examination process. These include:

Peer Review - Begun in June 2007 as a joint initiative with the New York Law School's Institute for Information and Policy, peer review is a pilot project that allows technical experts in computer technology, for the first time, the opportunity to submit annotated technical references relevant to the claims of a published patent application before an examiner reviews it. Studies have shown that when patent examiners have the best data in front of them, they make the correct decisions. However, examiners have a limited amount of time to find and properly consider the most relevant information. This is particularly true in the software-related technologies where code is not easily accessible and is often not dated or well documented."

Cross-posting from Peer-to-Patent blog:

The USPTO announced year-end quality results and published its Performance and Accountability Report.

Director Jon Dudas noted that "The USPTO will work tirelessly to ensure high quality agency actions, but we must make progress to ensure examiners are presented with applications that clearly depict the claimed invention and relevant prior art is presented to the examiner in a timely manner."

"Consistent with Director Dudas' direction, to encourage focused and complete information that allows examiners to make the best decisions when examining applications, the USPTO has initiated a number of improvements to better focus the examination process. These include:

Peer Review - Begun in June 2007 as a joint initiative with the New York Law School's Institute for Information and Policy, peer review is a pilot project that allows technical experts in computer technology, for the first time, the opportunity to submit annotated technical references relevant to the claims of a published patent application before an examiner reviews it. Studies have shown that when patent examiners have the best data in front of them, they make the correct decisions. However, examiners have a limited amount of time to find and properly consider the most relevant information. This is particularly true in the software-related technologies where code is not easily accessible and is often not dated or well documented."

Ensuring that Patents Don't Block Stem Cell Research

Apropos of my posting on how Bush lied about the availability of stem cell lines for research, the news is now full of stories about the pathbreaking work of the Japanese and Wisconsin (and Harvard) researchers who have developed a way to "convert" skin cells into stem cells.  It's engendering a lot of I-told-you-so's from conservatives, of course.  This new research sounds to be just the beginning of important opportunities to  develop life-saving cures that is being endorsed on both sides of the political aisle.  The question now arises whether the intellectual property practices of the funding institutions are going to block or enable open scientific research? 

The Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF) which hold the intellectual property in this innovation as well (at least as concerns the Wisconsin team) has a bad track record of limiting access to its innovations even to the scientific research community.  Several of its stem cell patents were struck down as invalid and improperly granted by the USPTO.  Whereas WARF has made its patents available to researchers in the past, it is important to track the progress of the scientific conversation in this area of research lest  new advances be delayed as a result of greed.

Rick Weiss, Science Correspondent for the Washington Post speaking on the Brian Lehrer Show on NPR today, was too quick to dismiss a caller's concerns about how patents might limit access by scientific researchers.  His response made it sound as if there is some loophole in patent law that automatically guarantees access by researchers.  There isn't.  We don't know what patents have been filed or granted.  And we don't know how they plan to make their intellectual property available and under what conditions.  This work is successful because lots of people are paying attention to it and working on it at different institutions.  Let's hope that neither patent law nor the patent practices of the licensing institutions stand in the way of this collaboration.

Peer-to-Patent Goes Live Today!

The Peer-to-Patent system <http://www.peertopatent.org>  is live!

Become a community reviewer and improve the quality of patents at www.peertopatent.org.

• Review and discuss patent applications submitted for open review.
• Research published resources relevant to the patent application's claims.
• Upload and explain prior art for the community.
• Annotate, evaluate, and rank each other's prior art.
• Create the "top ten" list of prior art references forwarded to the USPTO.

Anyone can participate as a reviewer <http://www.peertopatent.org/signup> , a patent application facilitator <http://dotank.nyls.edu/communitypatent/docs/info/P2P_Facilitator_Guideline.pdf> , and by sharing information about the pilot with others.

Inventors <http://dotank.nyls.edu/communitypatent/signup.html>  can submit a qualified patent application for open review.  Public participation is crucial to demonstrating the value of openness and making the case for greater USPTO accountability to the technical community.

For a summary of the applications posted by GE, HP, Intel, IBM and Red Hat for review click here http://dotank.nyls.edu/communitypatent/applications.html.

Become a part of this historic pilot program. Help the USPTO find the information relevant to assessing the claims of pending patent applications today! Visit http://www.peertopatent.org.

Project organizers and Steering Committee members will present the project and answer questions at the Peer-to-Patent auditorium on New York Law School’s Democracy Island, Second Life, on Monday, June 18 at 12 p.m. PST/3 p.m. EST. Attendees can find the event by searching Second Life’s directory for Democracy Island, or by following this link: www.tiny.cc/rfqh3.

Peer to Patent: Correcting Misimpressions

Deep Jive writes: "Yes, they are actually going to allow, through the internet, a community of individuals to comment and ‘vote’ on trademark and patent applications — and use their opinions to help decide whether or not to approve some of these applications."

If this were, in fact, the case it would be sheer idiocy, as the blog suggests.  So while some have referred to this as a "well-thought out contrarian view," in fact, it misrepresents the ends and means of the project.  There's a reason that companies like Intel, Oracle, IBM, HP, Computer Associates, Red Hat, Microsoft and General Electric are willing to put their valuable patent applications through such a process.

First, this pilot has nothing to do with trademark applications.  This is a pilot with software and technology patent applications only.  It is open to small and big companies alike.

Second, this is not a "vote."  No one thinks for a minute that we want to decide about a twenty-year grant of monopoly rights over an invention that could shape an industry and basic scientific research based on a popularity contest.  The goal is, instead, to produce a decision better informed by and accountable to scientific research.

Third, people aren't being asked for their "opinions" about an application nor are they editing an application on a wiki.  This is a process to solicit research -- qualifying publications that pre-date the invention ("known as prior art") and are relevant to assessing specific claims of the patent.  The community is supplying the best and most relevant research to the Patent Office to assist the examiner with his or her own search.  Bibliographic information and explanation of the relevance to the patent's claims will be required.

Fourth, the community does not decide nor can an application be voted up or down.  The Patent Office makes the decicision on the basis of statutory standards.  The examiner conducts a search as he would without public participation.  But since the examiner only has 18-20 hours to do the entire job, the public is helping provide additional search resources.  Think of it as a human database.  Considering that the examiner now only has access to a closed database of mostly old patents, we WANT the examiner to have access to the best information to make this decision.  It's not only a matter of distributing workload.  Rather, there's someone out THERE that knows something more about the technology at issue than someone HERE, i.e. in a database in DC at the Patent Office.

While the term "wiki" has frequently been used by the press to describe this project because it is a metaphor that signals openness and distributed, collective intelligence, this is NOT wikipedia for patents.  Patent Rule 1.99 now allows the public (for a fee) to submit relevant publications in response to a patent application but without commentary.  But this mail-in system only attracts a handful of submissions.  How many grad students could afford this?  How many programmers would take the time to submit by mail?  How many professors would do the research but refrain from annotations or comments?  How many hobbyists with deep knowledge but no idea that they have a right to participate?

By putting it on-line, making it free, enabling commentary on the research and integrating public participation with the legal decision-making process, we can make that determination better informed and, at the same time, enable the public to participate.  Citizens have the right and obligation to deliberate about questions of public importance.  Designed right, technology can help to open up governmental decision-making to meaningful and manageable participation.

For more information, please visit: http://dotank.nyls.edu/communitypatent

Peer to Patent in the News

The Washington Post has an article on the front page today (March 5, 2007) by technology reporter Alan Sipress, "Open Call from the Patent Office."  The article describes the project as follows: "The Patent and Trademark Office is starting a pilot project that will not only post patent applications on the Web and invite comments but also use a community rating system designed to push the most respected comments to the top of the file, for serious consideration by the agency's examiners. A first for the federal government, the system resembles the one used by Wikipedia, the popular user-created online encyclopedia." 

This has been followed by a posting and extended discussion on Slashdot.
Also check out the Wall Street Journal, Tech Meme, The Guardian, and American Public Media Marketplace (audio coming soon!).

In their article, Open Sources: Voices From the Open Source Revolution, Chris DiBona, Sam Ockman, and Mark Stone state that “[s]cience, after all, is ultimately an Open Source enterprise. The scientific method rests on a process of discovery, and a process of justification. For scientific results to be justified, they must be replicable. Replication is not possible unless the source is shared: the hypothesis, the test conditions, and the results. The process of discovery can follow many paths, and at times scientific discoveries do occur in isolation. But ultimately the process of discovery must be served by sharing information: enabling other scientists to go forward where one cannot; pollinating the ideas of others so that something new may grow that otherwise would not have been born.” Out of all of the readings this week, I believe that this one simple passage best describes the theory that the regulation of software must be open enough to act as a catalyst for further discovery. As stated above, it is necessary to have some aspects of software experimentation and innovation readily available in order to help generate even further advancement. Yet, at the same time, efforts must be taken to ensure that the contributions of each individual are duly recognized and protected. Even Open Sources must be tempered by some protections for the creator.