Comments on: IBM taps open source to improve patent quality

Patent king IBM works with the Patent Office and OSDL to increase scrutiny and review of patent applications.

[zaznet]

Good and Bad...

The good is obviously that better review of patents can be accomplished. The bad is that companies making a patent filing will become subject to public review before their patent is granted.

This allows for some pretyt big abuse of the patent filing system. If IBM has a chance to post a negative comment on a specific patent, they can prevent any competitor from being awarded a patent. If the patent is regected and IBM is able to deliver a product that would have been covered under that patent, they are not free from having to license it.

[Len Bullard]

Possibly But I Don't Think So

My limited understanding of this is that it enhances public review and discovery of prior art. The patent reviewer still establishes the logical provability of the claims. One would wish to know what the rule is for accepting prior art.

This is a good effort at using the technologies to solve the overload problem. Given an answer to the query above, it may also help mitigate the human-in-the-loop effects where the only prior art submitted is from one's own work or the work of one's historical peers thereby skirting work in the same domain done by others.

EOLAS won largely because of the language being logically opaque and because the prior art submitted did not consider large and more extensive bodies of work done by non-web communities. What IBM is doing can be most effective in helping with those problems.

[Len Bullard]

Good Work, Bob

Good work, Bob. Using the technology to solve the problems created by the technology is an initiative of decency, stewardship and character.

Way to go.

[Captain_Spock]

Just Like See And Tell...

... who developed it first, UH! Certainly, a good strategy. The next B_E_T_T_E_R step forward for IBM W_I_L_L -- B_E -- T_O -- O_P_E_N -- S_O_U_R_C_E -- O_S/2--W_A_R_P! in order to help push -- O_P_E_N--D_O_C_U_M_E_N_T -- F_O_R_M_A_T -- S_T_A_N_D_A_R_D_S!