The current patent system is under strain and is failing to cope up. Right now the average waiting time to win a patent is 27 months and rising. There is a huge backlog which is a being blamed for a fall in quality of inspections of the patent applications. One interesting suggestion is to open up the patent process to peer review. A pilot effort for 250 patent applications is getting underway.
In this pilot project the US Patent Office is planning to post patent applications on the Web and invite comments but also use a community rating system designed to push the most respected comments to the top of the file. This is another example of crowdsourcing. At one level this is not such a radical suggestion. After all journals have been using peer reviews for generations. Arguably the role of a patent officer and a journal editor are similar. Both have to determine if the claims are real and novel. It will be interesting to see how this experiment goes.
There are broader changes underway as well. There are several battles that are bubbling over. One of interest is about software patents – should they be granted. Lest you think this is an academic issue, you just need to look at the Verizon/Vonage dispute. On the other side there is a raging dispute about the pernicious copyright law that is brought into sharp focus by the Viacom/Google lawsuit. On both these issues I have yet to take a position.
Since I am a fence sitter right now, I like to watch the debates play out. Therefore I am disappointed that the World Intellectual Property Day on April 26th turned out to be such a damp squib. You see I have this hope that an epiphany would strike me and remove my confusion about these issues. I admit this is a lazy way of resolving things. But somehow things haven’t come to head for me although I do believe that the IPR/patent regime will change significantly in the coming years.
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