P2Patent System to Launch in 2007

According to Andrew Noyes writing for GovExec.com on October 19, 2006, a yearlong test of the Community Patent Review Project will begin accepting about 200 patent applications from IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Oracle, and others that will get "moved to the front of the line" for review. The project schedule calls for the "p2patent system" to be "tested and soft launched on published patents" in January of 2007 with formal reviews beginning in April 2007.



Until then you can hear from the project sponsors on "how the system will work, why patent applicants and their lawyers should submit applications and why scientists, engineers and legal professionals should get involved as peer reviewers," in an online chat at the State of Play Academy on Monday, Oct 30 at 2:30 EST.

The Community Patent Review project team will also "initiate discussions of technical system architecture in the next couple weeks." The initial topic will be establishing a candidate technical architecture that supports the project specification (use cases). To signup for the developer list where this discussion will occur, click the following link https://lists.osdl.org/mailman/listinfo/p2patent-developer

Here is what is currently planned for the USPTO 2007 Pilot in Phase 1 of Community Patent Review:

1. Application is published on the p2patent web site and available for comments for a 4 month time period. This time period is designed to inform rather than compete with or delay substantive examination.
2. Electronic notifications of the new application's availability go out to the peer review community by means of electronic subscription.
3. Peer reviewers invite more experts to subscribe and participate.
4. Peer reviewers can search and find applications of interest.
5. Peer reviewers can associate tags or keywords with applications or prior art, so that they are easier for the community to find in the future.
6. Visualization aids reveal web site activity and make the Community Patent peer review community visible to itself. Such aids might include visualizations of the number of applications and which applications have the most comments.
7. Once registered, peer reviewers can: 1) rate claims, 2) submit prior art examples, 3) comment on the patent or on specific prior art submissions, 4) rate prior art submissions, 5) rate prior art, 6) rate peer reviewers.
8. Prior art submissions are added to a community knowledge base and are available for use in future application reviews.
9. Peer reviewers can view and rate the comments and prior art examples created by others, or add follow up comments in a discussion thread.
10. Alerts are generated, notifying subscribers about new postings (e.g. prior art and/or comments) that are added to a specific application as well as the posting of new applications in areas of interest.
11. Rank ordered results of prior art submissions are sent to the patent examiner and inventor at the close of the peer review period.
12. Examiner can use as few or as many prior art submissions as desired in making the patentability determination.
13. Members of the community receive "karma effects," status points for submitting prior art that is deemed relevant by the community and used by examiners.
14. The application continues through the normal patent examination process on an accelerated schedule.

I'm still skeptical, but it might beat complying the USPTO's new rules on accelerated examination for getting "moved to the front of the line."