On April 10th Patexia will be heading to the USPTO headquarters in Alexandria, VA to participate in a roundtable discussion on crowdsourcing and the US patent review process. The USPTO is seeking input on how to get higher quality prior art, specifically non-patent literature, in front of their patent examiners, with the ultimate goal being a more efficient and transparent system that produces better patents.

We are excited to share and present the success that our expert community has had and we will be sure to keep you updated as this continues to move forward. In the meantime we would love to hear your thoughts on some of the following talking points:

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?

Cheers,

The Patexia Team