AskPatents.com: A Stack Exchange To Prevent Bad Patents • Hacker News Board

Re: AskPatents.com: A Stack Exchange To Prevent Bad Patents

#51

Post by iamgoat » Thu, Sep 20, 2012, 5:41 PM UTC

gpcz wrote: post #42

veidr wrote: post #27

Fuck yeah. Applying crowdsourcing to prior art discovery is probably the most viable treatment for improving the USA's patentile dysfunction problem, due to: a.) low-cost b.) high potential for busting garbage patents c.) low potential for abuse/trolling/making-things-worse With respect to (c), the most obvious attack vector for Myhrvoldian corporo-fascists would be DOS/dilution-via-huge-numbers-of-paid-shills. But I…

I just hope a patent troll doesn't sue Stack Exchange for patent infringement in order to bring this service offline...

On the contrary, I would love to see what happens if they try. It would get the right kind of attention. This service is a great step in the right direction.

Re: AskPatents.com: A Stack Exchange To Prevent Bad Patents

#52

Post by fpp » Thu, Sep 20, 2012, 5:49 PM UTC

This is really great - some additional suggestions:

- When you're submitting a patent application you are required to have done a prior art search and list found prior art.

- law firms providing patent services often outsource prior art searches (more and more also to India etc)

- companies attacked with "Jules Verne patents" or overly broad patents often pay large amounts to find most relevant prior art

Suggestions:

(1) alloy users to put up bounties for finding prior art on existing / pending patents or for technology areas. I believe bounties should be starting with about $5K up to $100k+

(2) pay out those bounties based on a particular formula - e.g. when usable results top 5/ best answers get shares of the bounty pool - e.g. best answer 35%, 2nd 20%, 3rd 15%, 4th 10%, 5th 10%, 6th 10%

(3) Similar to bounties this could also be done via a sponsoring system

Re: AskPatents.com: A Stack Exchange To Prevent Bad Patents

#53

Post by coldpie » Thu, Sep 20, 2012, 5:51 PM UTC

wissler wrote: post #49

It's a trap! I'm serious. This is a horrible idea. It's simply a way to get you to forge your own new set of chains.

Change doesn't often happen in huge leaps and bounds. If you wait for huge leaps and bounds to occur before you endorse a change, you'll never get any change at all.

This at least brings attention to the issue, and has the support of Google (and, I bet, other tech companies large and small in the coming days) and the USPTO. Before today, would you have expected so large a community as SE to create a website specifically dedicated to reviewing patents, of all things? The scale of this site and its supporters should show that this is a growing issue, and it's only going to garner more attention through Ask Patents.

One big advantage a site like Ask Patents gives us is the ability to quote numbers and statistics. Consider an argument like this being presented to Congress. 75% of the 500,000 patent filings in 2013 were found by Ask Patents to contain claims on prior art, and were rejected by the USPTO. Each of these cost an examiner two work days to review the application, prior art submissions, and process the rejection. That adds up to , or a whole lot of money! Clearly we need to enforce fees on rejected patents to cut down on government spending.

I wholeheartedly support this idea and would love to see it take off.

Re: AskPatents.com: A Stack Exchange To Prevent Bad Patents

#54

Post by danielweber » Thu, Sep 20, 2012, 6:09 PM UTC

fpp wrote: post #52

This is really great - some additional suggestions: - When you're submitting a patent application you are required to have done a prior art search and list found prior art. - law firms providing patent services often outsource prior art searches (more and more also to India etc) - companies attacked with "Jules Verne patents" or overly broad patents often pay large amounts to find most relevant prior art Suggestions:…

When you're submitting a patent application you are required to have done a prior art search and list found prior art.

What effect do you think this would have on small inventors?

Re: AskPatents.com: A Stack Exchange To Prevent Bad Patents

#55

Post by fpp » Thu, Sep 20, 2012, 6:18 PM UTC

danielweber wrote: post #54

fpp wrote: post #52

This is really great - some additional suggestions: - When you're submitting a patent application you are required to have done a prior art search and list found prior art. - law firms providing patent services often outsource prior art searches (more and more also to India etc) - companies attacked with "Jules Verne patents" or overly broad patents often pay large amounts to find most relevant prior art Suggestions:…

When you're submitting a patent application you are required to have done a prior art search and list found prior art. What effect do you think this would have on small inventors?

this is a current requirement for everybody submitting a patent application

Re: AskPatents.com: A Stack Exchange To Prevent Bad Patents

#56

Post by cruise02 » Thu, Sep 20, 2012, 6:26 PM UTC

creamyhorror wrote: post #35

This seems wonderful. It's exactly the sort of practical solution that could really make a big dent in the patent problem, and to see it actually come into being with the cooperation of the USPTO and Google Patent Search is very, very heartening. I hope folks here will take time to read this new site from time to time and raise any particularly problematic patent applications to their circles. There's the risk of rea…

I think it's fine to ask about and discuss already approved patents on Ask Patents. See the answer to: http://patents.stackexchange.com/q/191/288

> But you can still ask for or post prior art and potentially make a difference.

> Even though you can't just submit that for free on a granted patent, you make it a bit easier for the folks that do have skin in the game by sharing what you have on the problematic patent(s). That way, if someone is sued for infringing, they'll be armed with what they need to defend themselves.

Re: AskPatents.com: A Stack Exchange To Prevent Bad Patents

#57

Post by Dn_Ab » Thu, Sep 20, 2012, 6:36 PM UTC

Oh good! Something like this is what I asked for/about a 1.5 months ago. Although, I missed the crowdsourcing angle. Also glad to see that the Patent Office does want to be more productive =)

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4339035

Re: AskPatents.com: A Stack Exchange To Prevent Bad Patents

#58

Post by 6ren » Thu, Sep 20, 2012, 6:38 PM UTC

spolsky wrote: post #26

ajb wrote: post #19

This is a step forward, and I hope it is successful. However as it stands what this actually means is that finding prior art is an externality of submitting a patent claim. The cost of stopping a dubious patent from causing damage is borne by the victims, rather than the instigator. If these crowdsourcing schemes are successful, the next step should be to make filers of such patents pay a fee to those who found the p…

I love that idea! Until that happens, we actually expect that companies in patent-happy industries will monitor filings by their competitors and spend some of their own money and resources blocking competitors from building bad patent portfolios (there was enough of this on Peer To Patent, a very small-scale experiment, to give me confidence that it will happen)

That makes sense. Consumer protection law (Trade Practices Act) in Australia was designed for consumers to use - but it turned out it was always competitors who used them.

Re: AskPatents.com: A Stack Exchange To Prevent Bad Patents

#59

Post by noonespecial » Thu, Sep 20, 2012, 6:51 PM UTC

This is even more useful than it sounds at first. If all it did was to prevent patents with essentially identical claims from being issued over and over, it would be a huge win.

As it is now, simply paying off one troll because you validate a password or a license in you app is no guarantee whatsoever that another won't show up next week to troll you on the exact same feature.

Re: AskPatents.com: A Stack Exchange To Prevent Bad Patents

#60

Post by bpodgursky » Thu, Sep 20, 2012, 6:53 PM UTC

Really cool!

One idea-- it would be awesome if I could set up an account with a list of topics I have experience in (maybe just pulled from linkedin?), and be automatically notified when an application relevant to my knowledge is submitted.

I bet there would be thousands of people happy to chime in once a week / month when a patent in a specific field they have experience in was submitted. It would be a great way to build up a base of expert knowledge without requiring people to be constantly polling the site.