Communications of the ACM on Peer-to-Patent

The latest issue of Communications of the ACM has published an article by Andy Oram supporting Peer-to-Patent. The article, Peer to Patent Needs Your Expertise, is one of the February issue's cover stories. In the article, Oram calls upon ACM members to take action:

ACM’s mission calls on its members to lend their expertise to help policymakers and institutions determine the proper role of technology. The U.S. patent system is a particularly apt context for exercising this mandate, because inventors in the computer field live under the constant fear of lawsuits based on patents that should never have been granted in the first place

Oram goes on to explain just why Peer-to-Patent needs the support of people like ACM members:

Peer to Patent should be appealing largely because it’s an immediate intervention with measurable outcomes. Patent applications will not receive the reviews they need until researchers see them as part of their personal responsibility to society, in the same way they spend time refereeing journal papers, sitting on the boards of nonprofit organizations, and performing university-related duties unrelated to their own central research tasks.

The complete article by Andy Oram can be found in the February issue of Communications of the ACM or downloaded here