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"Center for Patent Innovations"

By Lawrence B. Ebert, Esq.

Michael Schultz of Message Infusion, LLC emailed, noting that the New York Law School and its Center for Patent Innovations (people behind Peer-to-Patent along with the USPTO) have just launched a new initiative with a focus similar to that of Article One.

Michael noted that Patently-O had written about this, which LBE already knew.

The Patently-O post began: The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and Public Patent Foundation (PubPat) started the ball rolling with public interest challenges to patents via reexamination. IPBiz has written again and again about how PubPat, along with FTCR (now known as Consumer WatchDog), were completely blown out of the water on their ill-planned re-exam request of WARF's stem cell patents. PubPat's prior art was found not to be enabled, and the declarations were "conclusionary."

LBE did enjoy one comment at Patently-O: This will work about as well as Patent Busters . . . what, they went out of business because armchair searchers were tired of putting in hours worth of work for no return . . . they realized they could make more recycling cans rather than search for prior art . . .? Oh well, another (terrible) idea whose time never was. File this one under "picking up cans on Route 22" [inside Jersey joke] but not unrelated to the fate of the guy who discovered Lipitor.

Another Patently-O commenter wrote: The anticipated, and confirmed, failure to invalidate the patents was meant to rebut criticism of the quality of patent examination. Seems no one paid attention. Gee, remember that the awful Eolas patent never got invalidated, in spite of the awesome number of dollars invested by Microsoft. Further, it's easy for Quillen and Webster to talk about a 97% patent grant rate, but, on deeper inspection, that turned into pure fiction. Yes, the "patent quality" harpies do talk a lot, but no one does pay attention to the aftermath.

The PatentHawk blog was not buying into the new venture: 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.

The 271blog mentioned the program.

Of peer-to-patent, note LBE's article in the Nov. 08 IPT, which noted: In this version, the Obama plan calls for an option of a rigorous AND public peer review that would produce a ?gold-plated? patent. This author has already commented on IPFrontline about a downside of ?public peer review.? [See Inadvertent Argument Against Peer-to-Patent (June 28, 2007) at http://www.ipfrontline.com/depts/article.asp? id=15505&deptid=4]

The peer-to-patent folks have demonstrated a knack for not understanding what prior art is.

***Of some relevance to WARF patents, Duncan Williams posted a comment which included the text:

The European WARF patents are basically a marketing ploy. Countries that are a member to the GATT-TRIPS prohibit patents relating to "diagnostic, therapeutic and surgical methods for the treatment of humans or animals." See Article 27. So obtaining or enforcing medical procedure patents in any GATT country is simply not worth the money it takes to obtain the patent.

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