The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) hosted a roundtable event on April 10, 2014, to solicit public opinions regarding the use of crowdsourcing and third-party preissuance submissions to identify relevant prior art and enhance the quality of examination as well as the quality of issued patents. Members of the public were invited to participate.
USPTO Extends the Crowdsourcing Written Comment Period
On March 19, 2014, the USPTO published a Federal Register notice announcing an April 10, 2014 roundtable event and soliciting public feedback regarding topics presented in the notice directed to the use of crowdsourcing and third-party preissuance submissions to identify relevant prior art. The notice set a written comment deadline date of April 25, 2014. The USPTO extended the comment period to provide interested members of the public with an additional opportunity to submit written comments to the USPTO.
The new deadline for receipt of written comments in response to the March 19, 2014 notice was May 9, 2014.
Roundtable Event
The roundtable was held on April 10, 2014, at USPTO headquarters in Alexandria, Virginia.
Roundtable materials:
- Agenda [PDF]
- Web cast recording
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Written Comments - Instructions
Any member of the public, whether they attended the roundtable or not, may submit written comments on the following topics regarding the current third-party submission process and ways the Office can use crowdsourcing to improve the quality of examination:
1. How can the Office leverage the collective knowledge available via crowdsourcing to provide an examiner with relevant prior art?
2. What suggestions do you have for the Office to encourage more third-party submissions from the scientific and technical community via crowdsourcing activities?
3. Aside from encouraging more third-party submissions, what are other ways the Office can leverage crowdsourcing to get relevant information from experts in the scientific and technical community to the examiner?
4. How can the Office encourage more third-party participation while ensuring that no protest or other form of pre-issuance opposition to the grant of a patent on an application is initiated after publication of the application?
5. What, if anything, is preventing you from submitting prior art as part of a third-party submission?
6. What other ideas do you have to ensure examiners have the most relevant prior art in front of them during examination?
The Office also seeks comments on any additional topics, not listed above, that might serve as a basis for future discussions regarding the current third-party submission process and ways the Office can use crowdsourcing to improve the quality of examination.
Please submit your written comments to CrowdsourcingRoundtable2014@uspto.gov.
Deadline for submitting written comments: May 9, 2014.
For further information on submitting written comments, please see the Federal Register notice.
Comments on Use of Crowdsourcing and Third-Party Preissuance Submissions To Identify Relevant Prior Art
Contact Information
- Requests for additional information regarding registration and speaker presentations should be directed to:
Jack Harvey
Director
Technology Center 2800
Telephone: 571-272-8004 E-mail: jack.harvey@uspto.gov
- Requests for additional information regarding the topics for written comments and discussion at the roundtable event should be directed to:
Nicole Dretar Haines
Senior Legal Advisor
Office of Patent Legal Administration
Telephone: 571-272-7717 E-mail: nicole.haines@uspto.gov