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History of Prior Art Crowdsourcing

document Distributed Knowledge

History of Prior Art Crowdsourcing
12 NOV 2011

In the last decade we have witnessed numerous initiatives for using people’s collective knowledge to improve the processes and quality of the IP system. With a certain craze heating up around it, here’s a quick overview of what has been done so far and what is in the works. The pioneer in the field was BountyQuest, founded in January 2000, with an aim to find prior art for invalidating patents. Even with the financial backing and endorsement by Amazon’s founder Jeff Bezos and Tim O’Reilly the project did not manage to take off. They failed to present a solid business case and it is possible that the world was not ready for such model quite yet. Soon after the launch, in 2002, the shop was closed. In 2004, the Patent Busting Project initiative was launched by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (w2.eff.org/patent). The goal was to challenge patents that suppress innovation and include illegitimate claims. First, a list of „10 Most Wanted“ patents was put together with help from the public, presenting some of worst offenders in the field of software patents. It included patents from companies such as Acadia Research, Test.com, Ideaflood/Hoshiko, and Firepond/Polaris. Most of the patents have been busted or significantly narrowed since then. Meanwhile the world was faced with a "global patent warming". The patent application backlog at the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) crossed over 700 000 in 2007. That pushed the USPTO to look for new solutions

for dealing with the increasing workload. In cooperation with the New York Law School and funding by a number of tech companies, the Peer-To-Patent pilot project was launched on June 15, 2007 (www.peertopatent.org). The aim was to involve the public in the patent application examination process by using their help for finding relevant prior art. Following the success of the project in the US, similar initiatives have been set up in Australia, Japan, Korea, and most recently in the UK. About a year after Peer-To-Patent’s first pilot project launched, the BountyQuest’s business model was reintroduced to the market by Article One Partners (www.articleonepartners.com). The company gained wide-scale publicity by aggressively taking on software patents. It has distributed over 1,8 million US dollars to researchers and claims to connect over 1 million researchers. In May 2011, a prior art crowdsourcing company BluePatent (www.bluepatent.com) was founded in Germany. Similarly to Article One Partners they focus on invalidation studies. They are currently raising seed funding via German crowdfunding platform Seedmatch. CrowdIPR (www.crowdipr.com) is a technology and patent research crowdsourcing venture backed by IP Group and Northstar Ventures among other investors and was founded in 2011. Unlike Article One Partners and BluePatent it is focusing on providing patent and technology state of the art studies at any phase of product or technology development. With a set of proprietary algorithms at the heart of the platform, it aims to evaluate the precise value provided by each contributor and reward them accordingly. All signs indicate that 2012 will be revolutionary for prior art and patent research. In addition to the two prior art crowdsourcing startups launched in 2011, there are several crowdsourcing initiatives from patent offices as well. The European Patent Office has launched a Third Party Observation service (epo.org/searching/free/observations.html) and a similar solution is being prepared by the World Intellectual Property Office.

Summary The pioneer in the field was BountyQuest, founded in January 2000, with an aim to find prior art for invalidating patents. Even with the financial backing and endorsement by Amazon’s founder Jeff Bezos and Tim O’Reilly the project did not manage to take off. They failed to present a solid business case and it is possible that the world was not ready for such model quite yet. Soon after the launch, in 2002, the shop was closed.

Description All signs indicate that 2012 will be revolutionary for prior art and patent research. In addition to the two prior art crowdsourcing startups launched in 2011, there are several crowdsourcing initiatives from patent offices as well. The European Patent Office has launched a Third Party Observation service (epo.org/searching/free/observations.html) and a similar solution is being prepared by the World Intellectual Property Office.

Tags: Article One Partners, bluepatent, bountyquest, competition, Crowdsourcing, history, Mikk, Patents, peertopatent, prior art

Posted by Jason Robbins

Nov 14, 2011 12:32 am GMT Viewed 736 times

Author: CrowdIpr Source

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