USPTO Peer Review Process To Begin Soon

An anonymous reader writes "As we've discussed several times before on Slashdot, the US patent office is looking to employ a Wiki-like process for reviewing patents. It's nowhere near as open as Wikipedia, but there are still numerous comparisons drawn to the well-known project in this Washington Post story. Patent office officials site the huge workload their case officers must deal with in order to handle the modern cycle of product development. Last year some 332,000 applications were handled by only 4,000 employees. 'The tremendous workload has often left examiners with little time to conduct thorough reviews, according to sympathetic critics. Under the pilot project, some companies submitting patent applications will agree to have them reviewed via the Internet. The list of volunteers already contains some of the most prominent names in computing, including Microsoft, Intel, Hewlett-Packard and Oracle, as well as IBM, though other applicants are welcome.'"

while they are at it...

... maybe they could start peer reviewing /. titles too

Patent ratings!!

... maybe they could start peer reviewing /. titles too

Nah.... We'd be much better off if the USPTO followed our example and started giving anonymous members of the public the ability to assign mod-points to patents. People could express their approval of a patent with ratings like: '+1 Innovative', '+1 Ingenious' while particularly silly patents would get a rating of: '+1 Funny'. As for disapproval, it could be expressed with ratings like: '-1 Prior Art' or the somewhat more forceful: '-1 WTF!?!' and let's not forget the indispensable: '-1 Patent troll'. Just imagine how much fun we could all have with a system like that!

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Savage-Rabbit (308260) wrote:

We'd be much better off if the USPTO followed our example and started giving anonymous members of the public the ability to assign mod-points to patents.

In fact, the WaPo article sounds to me like the USPTO intends something

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And now that Slashdot has heard of it, Microsoft will never receive another patent again.

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> Last year some 332,000 applications were handled by only 4,000 employees.

332,000 / 4000 = 83 patents per year per employee.

83 / 2000 hours/year = 0.0415 patents per hour, or about 24 hours per patent.

Granted, a number of employees are secretaries and

well..

How about some common sense. For one thing the applications are overly complex if you ask me. I bet amazons one-click patent app was over ten pages. You read ten pages on making a one-click-super-ecommerce-solution and you might think it was a complex patentable idea. Well, maybe you wouldnt but someone there does.

Re:well..

No they don't.

The purpose of patent protection is to grant the right of a person who comes up with something great to profit from it.

Without such protections, someone would invent something and then die of starvation before seeing any kind of profit. While he is trying to produce his invention, some megacorp would take his idea and put it in mass production and beat him to his own market. The inventor would be left with jack because noone would have to pay him to produce his innovation for themselves.

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Without such protections, someone would invent something and then die of starvation before seeing any kind of profit. While he is trying to produce his invention, some megacorp would take his idea and put it in mass production and beat him to his own marke

Thats not the same thing

His points defend the principle of patents. You are attacking certain abuses of the patent system. These are different arguments. I believe in democracy as a principle, but if 51% of the country voted that black people should be tortured, I would be against it. I'm in favour of the principle of the free market, but if some people lie starving in the street because they have no job or skills, I'm against that.
Patents are like anything else, there are abuses of the system, and extremes that can be cited, but in principle, we are better off with patents and copyright than we would be without them. The problematic cases and implementations need fixing, but don't throw out the whole system because parts of it need work.
It's easy to say "do away with it all". Its much harder to say what you would replace it with.

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I challenge the principle of patents.

The patent system is an abuse of the intellectual process for commercial gain. It should be abolished. It cannot be 'reformed'. The purpose of the patent system is to abuse the free inquiry and use of ideas.

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I believe in democracy as a principle, but if 51% of the country voted that black people should be tortured, I would be against it.

I think this is more of a semantic argument than a real difference, but I would argue that you don't really believe in democ

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The people lying and starving in the street do serve a very useful purpose.

If we are protected from the consequences of stupid decisions (such as giving a young girl who gets pregnant her own apartment and a monthly check- and freedom from her family) then

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Took me a while to reply since it wasn't clear you were joking or not.

Father raping and beating-- okay it happens. How many girls who slept with boys and got pregnant are we going to support? How many children with no family that grow up to be completely

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I'm glad that you are providing 100% of your spare cash to support the numerous people dying every second around the world.

I know you get by on a sustinence diet because even 50 cents a *month* can save an entire family in africa. So that coke you just ha

Why not unemployed, qualified paid volunteers

Why employ as "volunteers" from Oracle, HP, IBM, etc., which are known patent abusers?
Why not employ unemployed qualified volunteers and also pay them to do a peer review.
That way you solve two problems:
1. Boost employment to qualified people.
2. Prevent any bias since the people used by USPTO are unemployed anyway.

But, then like all other half-as$ed efforts by any Govt. agency, they will allow ballot stuffing by Microsoft and IBM....

Re:Why not unemployed, qualified paid volunteers

Why not employ unemployed qualified volunteers and also pay them to do a peer review.

So... Where do you suppose these qualified volunteers will come from? Perhaps present and former employees of companies that develop and use the kind of technology that gets patented are the people with the knowledge to make informed contributions to this Patent Wiki? I mean honestly, where do you expect they will come from? Slashdot, maybe? Believe it or not, the average Slashdotter may not actually be qualified for this type of work, and is every bit as biased as you suggest anyone working a "big company" is.

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How would this differ from actually hiring these unemployed people?

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Why employ as "volunteers" from Oracle, HP, IBM, etc., which are known patent abusers?

Unfortunately, neither you nor the modders understand that the "volunteers" are those having their patents reviewed via internet, not doing the revi

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Why not employ unemployed qualified volunteers and also pay them to do a peer review.

Why not use free, transparent reviews from identified, publically disclosed reviewers across the internet who can be rated by everyone as to the valu

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My dear anonymous coward, pray tell me how "unbiased" would an employee of Microsoft or IBM be? Even if you include your NDA, "over the wall" etc., do you seriously think none of this would leak back to the company?

Now, tell me how "biased" an unemployed w

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My dear fellow and close friend, let me provide some well-meant guidance.

Leaks are irrelevant. The wiki process would be (as far as I gathered, please correct me if I am wrong) open to anyone. By the very definition of a patent, the contents are disclosed

no subject

332000 divided by 4000 equals to 83

So each worker had to look at 83 of them PER YEAR

How the hell is this alot?

Re:no subject

5 days a week, times 47 [or so] weeks of work == 235 days. That gives them just under 3 (2.83) days to read the patent, understand it, look for prior art, and then say "yay/nay."

That's not actually a lot if you think about it. Sure some patents are probably trivially rejectable, but many probably require some deciphering before you get to the "omg that's obvious" stage.

Like this 7 page [google.com] patent (yes, I'm picking on them) for table based multiplication. Not only is it an obvious idea, that even the average 10 year old could figure out, but it's already been used by many hardware manufacturers (ARM used it for the ARM7 multiplier for instance). From the first few claims the "invention" doesn't really seem invalid until you put it together, and realize that it's the mechanical equivalent of long hand multiplication.

While you or I would easily spot that patent and say "no shit," a patent examiner must be able to defend their decision, so they must actually cite prior art (or make a convincing argument the idea was obvious). That also takes time.

Tom

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I think they need to raise the cost of getting a patent or base it on annual revenue of the company applying. This may solve a number of problems.

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You can't discriminate based on their income.

However, I don't see where filing patents is a right. If a company abuses it, they should have their patent abilities suspended.

Tom

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That would be dumb. Then no 'little guy's could afford to patent a great idea. Only corporations with deep pockets could. It's already very expensive for a regular working guy with a great idea to try to patent it and make some money off the invention.

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Stupid. Patents are already too expensive for an individual to acquire ($10,000 or so each, all said) and under your second method, a person could form a start-up or a patent farm with little or even negative revenue and grab a boatload of cheap patents.

Ok

Greater workload than you think...

(Former patent examiner here)

The vast majority (I'd say 98%) of patent apps are initially reviewed and rejected, but the attorney usually argues the rejection and/or adjusts the claims and sends the aplicaiton back. So the examiner has to re-review the application, and this back-and-forth action often goes on for months or years before the patent is finally issued or abandoned.

So really, each examiner is looking at twice as many applications a week as you think they are. Even though half of them are ones they've already seen, it typically takes 3-6 months to get a reply, and by then it's hard to remember all the details. Also, the claims are often so changed that a whole new prior art search is required. As Tom noted, it sometimes takes a while to dig up the prior art to shoot down each claim, even if the invention is clearly obvious.

At least in my art unit, it was rare to find an application with a spec that was under 20 pages and had less than 30 claims. I'd say 40-90 claims was the average. That's a lot of material to sift through, especially for entry-level engineers with little experience in the industry (which comprise the PTO's vast majority of employees). When I worked there, it was pretty standard for patent examiners to work 10 hour days in addition to Saturdays or Sundays, and not get paid for the overtime.

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Nowadays google makes finding prior art simple

I assume this statement will be followed up by an explanation of how to use Google to find documents with verifiable timestamps proving that they were published before a specific date.

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1.5 applications per employee per week, without taking account of holiday time, employees in admin etc.
Try researching the validity of 1.5 20 page technical documents for a field you have absolutely no expertise in a week.

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Try researching the validity of 1.5 20 page technical documents for a field you have absolutely no expertise in a week.

Judging by the whole mess the patent system is in, one could make a case that they didn't bother doing any research

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332000 divided by 4000 equals to 83

So each worker had to look at 83 of them PER YEAR

How the hell is this alot?

Errrr... because it probably take several weeks to understand most patents especially if you are not an expert in that particular field.

How Wonderful, M$ Employees Will Be Doing This

If we let Microsoft employees do this work for the Patent Office, I can only imagine what sorts of patents are going to get approved. M$ will have every patent under the sun. Somehow, I don't think letting huge corporate interests "assist" the government would make the process better.

Re:How Wonderful, M$ Employees Will Be Doing This

If we let Microsoft employees do this work for the Patent Office, I can only imagine what sorts of patents are going to get approved. M$ will have every patent under the sun. Somehow, I don't think letting huge corporate interests "assist" the government would make the process better.

I read TFA, and I don't see how that could happen.

The system doesn't allow MS employees (or anyone other than patent office employees) to approve patent applications, or even support them. The only thing that can be done through the wiki is to offer evidence of prior art that may invalidate the patent applications.

Of course, MS employees could try to invalidate all of, say, IBM's patent applications, or opponents of patents in general could try to invalidate everyone's applications, perhaps even submitting bogus prior art. That's why they're trying to create a reputation system, initially determining the weight to give a particular submission by the submitter's academic and professional credentials and then after the system has been running for a while using submission history -- favoring the submissions of those who have submitted solid prior art citations in the past.

I don't see any way this won't be an improvement over the present system.

It also doesn't appear to me that the submitters will be limited to employees of the listed corporations. Based on my reading of the article, it sounds like anyone who has the relevant qualifications will be able to participate. IBM, MS, etc. have volunteered to pay some of their employees to participate. It's rather obvious that they would want to, actually. It's much cheaper to invalidate other companies' patents before they're granted than to fight them in court afterward. It would be a good idea for the OSTG to pay a couple people to participate as well, focused on invalidating patents that may represent a risk to open source.

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The idea is that it is peer reviewed. Sure Microsoft could submit bogus information, but the concept of collaboration is that other people would see it and vote it as bogus. This is also much better than the current system because at least now, the paten

Language?

Why not just require more concise, less ambiguous language in the patents?

Oh, and penalties for things that are obviously non-patentable like this [google.com] table base multiplier. But the penalty shouldn't be money, though the fees should be forfeited. It should be in time. As in each obvious, or invalid patent sends your company to the bottom of the patent pile for 12 months.

The # of patents doesn't match the # of true innovations. So the true solution to the problem, and not the stopgap band-aid solution, is to reduce the # of junk patents. Since companies can't be trusted [sadly] to use self-control we'll have to, as a society, impose penalties and restrictions.

Maybe if companies knew they could lose patents for legit ideas by filing bogus applications they'd think twice before sending in the application?

Tom

This is more like Slash-like than wiki-like

From TFA

"Anyone who believes he knows of information relating to these proposed patents will be able to post this online and solicit comments from others. But this will suddenly make available reams of information, which could be from suspect sources, an

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How is this not Slash [wikipedia.org], from our truly and good Slashdot? Everything is there, from Score to karma to Mod points. This is far from being wiki, and much more like being slash.

It's supposed to be, they consulted CndrTaco

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How is this not Slash [wikipedia.org], from our truly and good Slashdot? Everything is there, from Score to karma to Mod points. This is far from being wiki, and much more like being slash.

It sure sounds like it to me. In fact, I suggested much the same

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Anyway, what I would like to see is truly peer reviewed patent examination, the kind of review that is done in the scientific community, where the process is publicly disclosed (let's say, in a specialized magazine) and people in the field either submit pr

Unfair advantage

So the big companies will have a influence on what new technologies get patents?

That is an unfair advantage because two reasons.

First, they will have a better view of developing technologies than the other companies. They will know earlier than others if s

Wiki-like?

the US patent office is looking to employ a Wiki-like process for reviewing patents.

Hopefully, the US Patent Office will not allow people with false credentials to review the patents.

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That assumes, of course, that the person with the faked credentials knows enough to understand what the patent application is about.

Some Numbers

I'm not sure where the Washington Post got their numbers, but according to the USPTO's own Annual Report [uspto.gov], they received more than 615,300 patent related applications, which were dealt with by 4,883 examiners. A reasonable calculation then suggests that they would have to process the applications in an average of 15 hours each to keep up with demand.

In actuality, only 332,535 patents were disposed in FY2006, which means the backlog (already in excess of on million patent applications) only grew. In a system where your application is not likely to even be looked at for the first 22 months, and it takes more than 2.5 years for the average application to be processed, they are desperately in need of help examining.

The most depressing part of the report is to look at their goals. The objective is not to reduce the backlog, or improve first action or total pendency time, it is simply to have the backlog increase by less than in previous years. With this kind of thinking, there is no end in sight. What is really needed is a radical change of leadership, such that the resources being allocated and the goals being set can actually improve the situation.

Typo in Title

"USPTO Peer Review Process To Being Soon"

To being soon what? :) Or is Yoda writing headlines again?

It's a difficult problem, but

Of course, no one denies that the patent system needs change--most likely a significant reform. The Patent Office knows this!! They are currently hiring thousands of examiners to help deal with the backlog. They have instituted hotelling programs to allow examiners to work from remote locations, thus freeing up valuable office space for new examiners. The Office is constantly developing new search tools to better help examiners locate prior art, especially for business method and software patents which can be very hard to invalidate.

Remember, the law as it currently stands states, "A person shall be entitled to a patent unless..." Thus, the burden is on the examiner to PROVE that a patent should not be granted. This can be VERY hard, even when the technology appears clearly to be unpatentable.

I have to say, I am very surprised at some of the comments coming from such an educated group of people. Destructive criticism will get us nowhere.

Notwithstanding the problems of our current system, patents ARE important for protecting innovation. Countries from around the world recognize this, and, believe it or not, try to emulate our system for the protection of intellectual property.

Give the Patent Office some credit here. This is a DRASTIC and REVOLUTIONARY change they are trying to institute here. It is VERY progressive, and it seems very in-tune with the open-source trend in information sharing and collaboration. They clearly recognize the need for change, and they really are working to find the right solution.

So before you start ranting about how the patent office sucks and how patents should be abolished. Take some time to think about why patents fundamentally encourage and protect innovation, and why the job facing the Patent Office is not so easy.

Again, everyone is looking for a better solution. That is why the Office is testing this program! Maybe it will work, maybe it won't. One thing, however, is sure: unhelpful and unreasonable criticisms from close-minded individuals do not help.

USPTO Rational for "Rubber Stapping" of Patents

"... Last year some 332,000 applications were handled by only 4,000 employees. ..."

I do not think that being over burdened with work is an acceptable reason for granting any patent. As for the "One Click" patent, who ever granted that one should be fired

Won't it be illegal, in Illinois at least?

There was this slashdot thread [slashdot.org] about proposed legislation in Illinois preventing computers at public libraries and schools from accessing "social networking" sites. Can the USPTO's "community rating system" be seen as a social network? Does the USPTO fun

This won't last

Unlike the PTO's examiners, who nowadays see applicants as their "customers", the commentors won't have a bias towards letting things slide. So they'll rightly shoot down most applications, and (assuming the PTO takes this seriously) grant rates will plumm

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Yoda, "Work for USPTO I do."

      Prove your worthiness you must, or deny your patent I shall...