Peer to Patent

The US Patents and Trademarks Office will soon try out Peer to Patent as a pilot project. This is great news. It is really important for silly patents to get rejected upfront than be granted and then used to bully everyone into either paying up an extortion fee or engaging in costly lawsuits. Unfortunately, there is still the problem of lots of such silly patents having already been granted and used for corporate "defence funds" (an equivalent of the "Mutual Assured Destruction" strategy) or towards unscrupulous ends.

The Economist has a nice set of balanced articles on patents and other IP-related topics.

(Originally posted on Advogato.)

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