Peer To Patent Project Is Catching On

In a previous post, I argued for the continued patentability of software. I recognize the existence of "bad" software patents or patents on software that were improvidently granted. I also recognize the economic inefficiencies created by legal patent monopolies for software methods and systems that are old or obvious. Notwithstanding these problems, I still believe that getting rid of all software patents would be bad for the economy and bad for the industry. Instead of restricting the scope of patentable subject matter to exclude certain classes of technology, we (patent lawyers, software engineers, and anyone interested in technology as an industry) should endeavor to increase the quality of patent examination, especially in terms of searching for prior art.

The USPTO recognizes this and in June of this year it started a pilot project in coordination with New York Law School's Do Tank, with the stated mission "to prove that organized public participation can improve the quality of issued patents." The project is called the "Peer to Patent Project" and it involves "1) review and discussion of posted patent applications, 2) research to locate prior art references 3) uploading prior art references relevant to the claims, 4) annotating and evaluating submitted prior art, and 5) top ten references, along with commentary, forwarded to the USPTO."

According to a recent post on the Peer-to-Patent Blog the project has had 186,043 page views from 32,457 unique viewers in 126 different countries/territories. Currently, 1737 people have signed up to be reviewers and have cited 106 instances of prior art on 22 applications.
There are currently 17 active patent applications for review.

1) Honey monkey network exploration
2) Dynamic readjustment and interpolation of progress method and system
3) Methods of enhancing media content narrative
4) Systems and methods for clinical decisions crawler agent
5) System and method for managing storage system performance as a resource
6) Method and apparatus for selectively executing different executable code versions which are optimized in different ways
7) Crossbar arithmetic processor
8) Smart drag-and-drop
9) Methods and apparatus to implement annotations based thunking
10) Method of obtaining data samples from a data stream and of estimating the sortedness of the data stream based on the samples
11) Security systems for protecting an asset
12) Method for configuring a windfarm network
13) Technique to modify a timer
14) Cross-cutting detection of event patterns
15) User interface paradigm for manufacturing applications
16) Computer compliance system and method
17) Vector length tracking mechanism
18) Relocating page tables

This project is particularly noteworthy for its ability to bring together the industry's Hatfields and McCoys. Project Sponsors include Intellectual Ventures, IBM, Microsoft, and Computer Associates, HP, GE, and Red Hat. The project is also obtaining broad grass-roots support from the likes of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. This post from the EFF calls for participation in gathering prior art for one published patent application, the Smart Drag and Drop application owned by Yahoo!.