US Patent Office Teams With Google On Database 82
Posted
by
samzenpus
from the free-for-the-looking dept.
from the free-for-the-looking dept.
PatPending writes "The Patent and Trademark Office announced it has reached a two-year 'no-cost' agreement with Google to make patent and trademark data electronically available and free to the public. From the article: 'Saying it lacks the technical capacity to offer such a service, PTO said the two-year agreement with Google is a temporary solution while the agency seeks a contractor to build a database that would allow the public to access such information in electronic machine-readable bulk form.'"
Re:Conflict of interest (Score:5, Insightful)
The data they'll be a privy too, whilst 'creating' the system would be invaluable.
Just out of curiosity, what "data" will they be privy to that isn't already supposed to be available to everyone? Google already serves up individual patents [google.com]. That means they already have the patent information. I assume this would just mean that the USPTO would serve them up applications faster? Or more efficiently? (instead of Google's usual technology of go find it and index it) And then allow for bulk downloads. I've used the USPTO search "engine" many times to reference patents in Slashdot stories and it's horrid compared to Google.
... well ... funny. I mean, I think there are other private search sites like Thomsom West that charge you per hour to use their search engine to crawl their indexes of laws and court cases that should be public data in the first place. I wouldn't go complaining about Google making the patent process more transparent and searchable if I were you ...
Really to think that Google's getting anything out of this is kind of
In my opinion, this is a very good development.
Re:Conflict of interest - nope (Score:3, Insightful)
what part of making it available to the public/world is some magic google advantage?
The idea here is that it will be open for everyone.
your argument here is pathetic.
while the agency seeks a contractor??? (Score:5, Insightful)
the two-year agreement with Google is a temporary solution while the agency seeks a contractor to build a database that would allow the public to access such information in electronic machine-readable bulk form
And what role is Google serving if they spend two years hosting the patents in their database while the USPTO spends 24 months looking for a contractor who will presumably charge money to do the same thing?
Why not have Google spend two-years building the interface with a plan to turn control of it over to USPTO employees in 2012? It seems like by then the USPTO could have gained the technical skills necessary to administer their database instead of turning to keys over to some different 3rd party contractor.
No?
Honestly (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't understand why they would bother seeking to farm this out to a different contractor, just allow Google to do the entire thing and tack a nice link on to their main search engine website that everyone can access. I mean honestly, Google does this thing best, no need to complicate things with yet another overly-long and costly-to-the-taxpayer bidding/contract process.
Re:Conflict of interest - nope (Score:3, Insightful)
The magic google advantage is depth and spread. Gone are the regional and state and single topic databases.
What might be offered to consumers for free, could be packaged in with vast amounts other data for paying customers eg government agencies or their private sector partners.
Re:Conflict of interest (Score:3, Insightful)
Welp, firstly you said was complaining no I didn't complain I was saying "If I was Google I'd do it".
From the definition of Conflict of Interest [wikipedia.org]: "A conflict of interest (COI) occurs when an individual or organization is involved in multiple interests, one of which could possibly corrupt the motivation for an act in the other." I would assume that by titling your post as "Conflict of Interest" and also saying that there is no way to circumvent it, you were complaining of corruption between Google and the United States Patent Office. Was I incorrect in my assumption?
Second, your telling me that there is nothing confidential about USPTO? Right, okay .... Next please!
Although parts of the process remain confidential, I question why any of it needs to be confidential. The material patented is confidential as the entity submitting it sees fit until they apply for it. Once the application has been submitted, then it's public. Hence the phrase "patent pending" to remind everyone that their invention is in process to become their intellectual property. A patent examiner employed by the federal government then gets the patent and reviews it for errors. They do some undetermined amount of research for prior art or related patents. This is confidential only because it's too laborious to publicize. As revisions are made, those are public too. Really the only confidential part is what the hell is going on inside the examiner's mind. And sometimes (like the Amazon 1-click), everyone would benefit from any sort of logic outlined by the examiner. Once it's approved, you better believe it's public and nothing should be confidential. Especially if you're about to get your ass sued over a patent ... how could anything related to that patent be held confidential and then be used against you in court?
You know, for a while the USPTO was seriously considering a wiki -- maybe even a community wiki -- where people could review new patents and discuss them with links to other patents and potential prior art. The problems with this idea is only that those making the comments would most likely not have the patent law expertise and it would amount to a landslide of opinions rather than real claims.
Transparency and publication of the entire patent process -- to the best of the USPTO's ability -- provides accountability and reliability to those of us who both benefit and suffer from patents. Trust me, you're barking up the wrong tree here and I'm at a loss for words to respond to your attitude of "next please!"
Re:Honestly (Score:4, Insightful)
Patents are already public information. Even if you put up a firewall, it's still public within the US. If you think the PRC isn't smart enough to hire someone to look up patents and send them a file, you're very racist or very shortsighted.
to ensure there's no competitive advantage... (Score:5, Insightful)
...USPTO should release all raw data and metadata for public consumption. If Google or anyone else want to build a frontend to it, let them do so.
Re:Conflict of interest (Score:3, Insightful)
Gee i donno, a big fucken database given to a big fucken advertising firm ...
How about you skip the handwaving and answer the fucken(sp) question
Or are you just about spreading FUD today?