US Patent Office innovates - yes, actually innovates

This sounds like an incident of actually doing something new with software, not innovation-as-another-word-for-copying that is practiced by some software companies.

In Open Call from Patent Office, the Washington Post reports that the patent office is opening up 250 patents to peer review from the public - rather than forcing over-worked patent examiners to do 100% of the legwork/research.

Sounds like a great idea. For sure it is an idea, not clinging to the status quo, which is refreshing.

I am sure that some companies, you know the type, will try to "game" the system. Hopefully, some checks/protections will be in place to keep that from happening.

The last thing we need is for some software company with tens of billions of dollars to apply their astroturfing techniques for deceiving the public and public servants with false information/responses about competitors patents, the way they pay people to send letters signed by fictitious people to magazines and politicians.

However, they have done that and it was found out - so ghost writing public opinion will probably get caught quicker and serve as an embarrassment, or prosecutable offense this time.

With so much money riding on patent decisions -- for instance, a federal jury ordered Microsoft last month to pay $1.52 billion for infringing two digital-music patents -- the program's designers acknowledge that the incentive to manipulate the system is immense.

The new approach used in this public trial will take advantage of web-based social programming that have proven useful in recent Web 2.0 applications like news, shopping, etc.