USPTO Revamps Open-Source Patent Process

Some interesting developments!!

Diane Peters, general counsel for OSDL, said she believed that the combined efforts of the open-source community and government would lead to a reduction in the number of legal threats to open-source developers and businesses.

The Patent Office officials met with the open-source community and several universities last month to discuss specific software patent quality issues. The main focus of the meeting was to create a better process for acquiring "the best prior art references" for the initial examination process.

A three steps program has been put in place:
1- The open patent review program will permit anyone to submit search criteria and to opt in to receive e-mailed updates with links to newly published patent applications. The goal, according to IBM, is to "establish an open collaborative community review within the patenting process to improve the quality of patent examination."

2- A second initiative will rely on OSDL, IBM, Red Hat, Novell, and VA Software's SourceForge.net to develop a system that will store source code in an electronically searchable format.


3- The Patent Quality Index, under the direction of Professor R. Polk Wagner of the University of Pennsylvania, will create a unified, numeric index through which the quality of patents and patent applications can be assessed.