Second Peer-To-Patent Pilot Phase Has Begun - UK-IPO Migh...

The Peer-to-Patent project (also known as the Community Patent Review project) is an initiative that seeks reform of the patent system by gathering public input in a structured, productive manner. Peer-to-Patent seeks to improve the quality of issued patents by connecting the USPTO to an open network of experts online.  In July 2009, I had reported that a first pilot phase of the U.S. Peet-to-Patent project was set oin hold. A new Peer To Patent pilot recently was announced by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and New York Law School. The new pilot will test the ability of the project to scale, both in volume and across subject matter areas. The maximum number of applications to be processed in this pilot has been increased to 1000 from the lower limit of 400 in the earlier pilot. In addition, the classes of subject-matter eligible to participate in the pilot is being increased threefold and will now include biotechnology, biopharmaceuticals, telecommunications, and speech recognition technology. The new pilot will commence on October 25, 2010 and will continue to accept applications through September 30, 2011. Several other changes are being made in this pilot from the earlier pilot, including a shortening of the time for review by about two weeks and a reduction in the number of items of prior art being forwarded to the USPTO from 10 to 6. Prior experience indicated that the period for peer review could be shorter and that there were few instances where more than 6 items of prior art were submitted.

It now has emerged that the UK Intellectual Property Office is set to join a Peer-to-Patent approach. On the UK-IPO website Baroness Wilcox, UK Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Business, Innovation and Skills, is quoted:

"The IPO will also trial a peer to patent project, which aims to improve the quality of the patents by ensuring they are sufficiently new and inventive. Patent examiners cannot be expected to have access to all the information already in the public domain and this project aims to address that. In the trial selected patent applications would be available for people to comment on and crucially rate each other comments. The highest rated comments would then be submitted to the patent examiner."

No further details are known so far.