USPTO Software Partnership Roundtable on Crowdsourcing Prior Art for Software Patents on April 10, 2014

The USPTO will hold a Software Partnership Roundtable on April 10 to discuss crowdsourcing and third-party preissuance submissions to identify prior art for software patents. The roundtable and its webcast will be open to the public, but advance registration is required by April 4. Individuals interested in presenting at the roundtable need to request to be a speaker by March 27. The USPTO will accept public comments until April 25.

The USPTO seeks input on the following questions:

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 preissuance 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?

For additional information, visit: https://federalregister.gov/a/2014-05996

DEADLINES
March 27 Expressions of interest in being a speaker
April 4 Registration for roundtable
April 4 Registration for webcast
April 10 Roundtable at USPTO, Madison Auditorium
April 25 Public comments

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