Community Review of Patents

The US Patent Office has just gone online, with Peer to Patent, a site developed in cooperation with the New York Law School project for community patent review. (Peer-to-Patent blog)

The goal behind the Peer to Patent Project, officially launched last Friday, is to allow anyone who's interested to weigh in on 250 pending patent applications belonging to one of the more difficult categories to decipher ... computer architecture, software and information security.
Involvement in the project comes with some perks: Instead of having to deal with the average four-year waiting period to get a patent application reviewed, the applications selected to participate can essentially butt ahead in line and get turned around in one year, according to the project's organizers. Current participants include GE, HP, Intel, IBM and Red Hat. Snippets from c|net news

An similar private sector effort launched last year, WikiPatents has almost 4 million patents in its database. WikiPatents was established in part by Kevin Hermansen of Salt Lake City, Utah to provide public patent clarity for the world. The top ten patents as of this month include hierarchical memory systems, cache memory, and dental tools for root canals. The descriptions of newly issued patents, such as this one for interpretation of visual information, include the claims, patent holder(s), and an opportunity for the public to assess market scale and value of the patent.

Patent Hoarding

According to Techdirt, there's a growing list of "investment firms drooling over the innovation-killing patent-hoarding lawsuit rewards", and they have already funded Geomas, which is suing Verizon for putting their yellow pages online.

This article, "Location-Based Search? Patented! Owner [Geomas] Plans To Sue Everyone", rather confirms the analysis of Professor Tim Wu, who said ... the real subject of American copyright is distributors ... who control the rights, bring the lawsuits, and take copyright as their industries’ “life-sustaining protection.”

In Virginia, RedOrbit reports that MercExchange is suing eBay over ... "Buy it now". This case is a rallying point for critics who argue the U.S. patent system is riddled with abuse from small businesses that sue established companies to enforce patents for ideas that have never been developed into products.