Patent Law

Article Two

By Gary Odom and Jordan Kuhn

Following in the soiled footsteps of Article One Partners, patent maimer by bounty hunting, Peer To Patent has added a branch organization, Post-Issue Peer To Patent, seeking to "improve the quality of patents by providing a framework for ferreting out weak, non-meritorious patent claims in patents that have issued."

From the Post-Issue website:

Harnessing the power of a community of peer reviewers created through Peer to Patent (www.peertopatent.org), Post-Issue elicits previously unidentified prior art that may invalidate or narrow the claims of issued patents. In so doing Post-Issue provides greater freedom to innovate, removes uncertainty from the patent system, and provides greater certainty as to the value of issued patents. Whether for-profit or non-profit, whether for responding to demand letters or litigation or for improving a party's own patents, all parties are invited to request posting of patents to Post-Issue for review.

Currently only six patents are posted on the Post-Issue website, one of which was previously butchered by Patent Hawk, this country's premier patent assassin. Four of the six patents are noted as of interest to Linux, which is fitting, since Post-Issue is essentially Article One Partners - Open-Sourced.

While arguably a nice service to the patent community, this ploy will most likely prove inefficient, due to reliance on under-tooled non-searchers, and like its parent project, non-scalable.

Previous Patent Prospector coverage of: Peer To Patent, Article One Partners.

Full post as published by The Patent Prospector on January 26, 2009 (boomark / email).