Side-stepping Bureaucracy and Speeding Up the Patent Process Through Community Review
Stephen Walli interviews with Beth Noveck via e-mail, May 2007.
A major problem with the U.S. patent process exists. Currently, U.S. patent examiners struggle with a backlog of applications that run as long as 24 to 36 months. As a result of a lack of research, shortage of time, and increasing backlog, patents for unmerited inventions end up approved. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is seeking ways to bring greater expertise to the review of patent applications to help ensure that only worthwhile inventions receive the valuable legal status.
The Peer to Patent Project is an initiative that opens the patent examination process to public participation. An online community-based effort, the Peer to Patent Project aims to improve the quality of issued patents by enabling the public to supply the USPTO with information relevant to assessing the claims of pending patent applications.
This revolutionary program creates a network for participation-at-large, allowing the community to have input in the legal decision-making process. The community supplies information and research based on its expertise. A patent examiner then makes the final determination based on legal standards. This process combines the democracy of open participation with the legitimacy and effectiveness of administrative decision-making.
In the summer of 2007, the USPTO will release the Peer to Patent Project online network. It will be complete with computer architecture, software, and information security patent applications.
What follows is an interview with New York Law School professor Beth Simone Noveck, who leads the Peer to Patent Project and has been involved with it since its inception.
Stephen Walli: What was the motivation for the Peer to Patent Project?
Beth Noveck: The Peer to Patent Project grew out of the realization that the quality of issued patents might be improved if the patent examiner had access to the right information to make informed decisions about "patentability." That knowledge rests not with a lone bureaucrat in government, but within the scientific community.
Q: What motivated your involvement?
A: I teach intellectual property, constitutional law, and electronic democracy at New York Law School. When describing the patent examination process to my students, it occurred to me that what we understand about the ways in which technology democratizes processes of decision-making could be brought to bear to reform the intellectual property system.
