Open Call From the Patent Office – washingtonpost.com

The Washingtonpost.com reports (link above) that the US Patent and Trademark Office is starting a pilot project that will not only post patent applications on the Web and invite comments, but also use a community rating system designed to push the most respected comments to the top of the file, for serious consideration by the agency’s examiners. The Washingtonpost.com article compares the the system to that used by Wikipedia, the popular user-created online encyclopedia.

The “peer to patent” project starts next week (week of 2 April) with a pilot programme, led by the Institute for Information Law and Policy at New York Law School and the US Patent and Trademark Office. The pilot will initially accept 250 patent applications from companies including IBM, Intel, Oracle, Hewlett-Packard and Microsoft.