Groklaw posted a blog article in response to the USPTO's announcement that Peer-to-Patent will be extended for another year as well as expanded to include patent applications for business methods. Groklaw author Pamela Jones was enthusiastic about the continued efforts by the USPTO:
I'm very happy to tell you that it's just been announced that the Peer-to-Patent project, which is a cooperative project between New York Law School and the USPTO, has been extended after the first year's trial. It's also been expanded to include business methods patents! Yum. I can't wait to see you try to invalidate some of those.
Jones goes on to comment on the utility of the project:
This is the first time the public has been involved in a project that actually can directly impact decisions by a US government agency...What does this announcement mean to me? That all our efforts to understand patent law and how to effectively search for prior art have been for a practical purpose, so dry as a bone as the subject is, let's keep on trying. And it means the USPTO recognizes that they do need help from the FOSS community to get prior art to their examiners before damage is done. That was the stated purpose of the Peer-to-Patent project, after all.
Jones was also very supportive of the new Center for Patent Innovations and its new executive director Mark Webbink:
You remember Mark Webbink, I'm sure. He was, for most of Groklaw's life, Senior Vice President and General Counsel at Red Hat. He's a great guy, and super competent, so this is wonderful news. Perhaps you remember he let me publish an article of his on Groklaw about understanding open source software way back in December of 2003.
The full text of the article can be found here.
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