Continuing on our zealous path of advocating the cause of collaborative work to produce superior results, Benjamin McEniery was kind enough to point out to SpicyIP, a brand new initiative from our friends down under- “Peer-to-Patent Australia”. This has been modelled along the lines of the Peer-to-Patent projects of the New York Law School (NYLS) and the Japan Patent Office.
A joint initiative of the Queensland University of Technology along with IP Australia, Peer-to-Patent Australia has been initially set up as a 6 month pilot to up the standards of the patent examination process and the quality of issued patents by allowing experts review participating patent applications as well as bring relevant prior art to the attention of IP Australia’s patent examiners.
The process interestingly allows experts to look at patents on the website for a 90 day “public inspection” period. This will allow all members to offer comments, point out prior art references, review applications etc.
The next step in this process involves Peer to Patent Australia forwarding the top 10 prior art submissions for each application to IP Australia to assist in the examination process, with the final discretion of the relevance of such prior art left to the Patent Examiner.
Focus areas at this stage of the initiative are on advancing areas of technology such as business methods and computer software with giants such as IBM, Aristocrat Technologies, Australia Pty Limited, General Electric Company, Hewlett-Packard, Residex Pty Ltd, Yahoo and CSIRO participating in this notable endeavour.
SpicyIP wishes the Peer-to-Patent Australia team the very best.
All those interested can visit the website and participate in the review process here.
For those interested in more reading on the Peer to Patent projects read here.
It’s not quite on the topic of collaborative patent review, but in the spirit of promoting collaboration in the prior art searching community, I wanted to add a small plug for my company’s website, http://www.intellogist.com.
Intellogist is built on a wiki platform, and offers wiki areas for users to contribute information about patent search tools, and collaborate on best practices in patent searching. We also offer a community ratings feature to allow users to rate the search tools that they use, and a discussion forum for patent search questions.
I hope your readers will consider stopping by!
If properly implemented, a peer-to-patent system could improve the current state of patent law by leading to better-quality patent applications and filings; it might even help reduce backlog problems that are currently presenting problems globally. I look forward to following the progress of Australia’s experiment.
If properly implemented, a peer-to-patent system could improve the current state of patent law by leading to better-quality patent applications and filings; it might even help reduce backlog problems that are currently presenting problems globally. I look forward to following the progress of Australia’s experiment.
I agree with Gena777’s comment. Opening up the patent process to public is definitely a move in the right direction to a more transparent system and will hopefully improve the quality of granted patents.
I think it is also important for everyone to try and spread the words as widely as possible. Due to the nature of the patent applications, we need the participation of experts in various specific areas. Most people will not be able to understand the jargons and technologies involved until they are being “translated” into layman terms.
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