Description (Forwarded by Paul Jacobs) Under the America Invents Act, the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has been allowing preissuance submissions of prior art from third parties, without fee for a small number of submissions. Last week they announced support for crowdsourcing of applications and discussions using the AskPatents.com, from StackExchange. It may be hard to make this work because many people who might contribute are not familiar with the patent review process and what is required to validate/invalidate a patent, or may not be truly disinterested parties; however, it is a very good symbolic step, at least.

SOURCE: http://www.uspto.gov/news/pr/2012/12-60.jsp