Commentary by Mark Wahl, CISA
Peer-To-Patent public community patent application prior-art review and Ontology-based translation between directory schemas (20080324)
The US Patent and Trademark Office is currently participating in a Peer Reviewed Prior Art Pilot project, in which applicants for patents classified in the Computer Architecture, Software and Information Security Technology Center can volunteer their application to be included as one of the 250 applications in the pilot for community (public) review. The goal of the pilot is to test whether ...collaboration can effectively locate prior art that might not otherwise be located by the [Patent] Office during the typical examination process
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More information on how to participate in finding and reviewing prior art is on the www.peertopatent.org web site:
Peer-to-Patent involves 1) review and discussion of posted patent applications, 2) research to locate prior art references 3) uploading prior art references relevant to the claims, 4) annotating and evaluating submitted prior art, and 5) top ten references, along with commentary, forwarded to the USPTO. The goal of this pilot is to prove that organized public participation can improve the quality of issued patents.
Anyone in the public can participate as a reviewer, a patent application facilitator, and by sharing information about the pilot with others. Inventors can submit a qualified patent application for open review. Public participation is crucial to demonstrating the value of openness and making the case for greater USPTO accountability to the technical community. A successful pilot will also make a case for expanding to other subject matter.
One of the patent applications open for community discussion on the peer-to-patent web site is my System and method for ontology-based translation between directory schemas, which will be available for comments in this pilot for approximately two more months. The application describes
An information processing system comprising a translation from a directory or individuals input source to a state database containing resource description triples, a mapping of the triples in the state database from one ontology class to another, and a translation from the triples in the state database to a directory or individuals output sink.
The specification, illustrations and information disclosure statements (1, 2, 3) are included on the site as well.
