Eric Hestenes

eric.hestenes@communitypatent.org

Eric Hestenes, a 19-year technology and management consulting veteran, is the Technical Project Leader for the Institute for Information Law & Policy's Community Patent Review Project. In his role as project leader, Mr. Hestenes oversees the development and implementation of the community patent review systems and infrastructure for the Institute in collaboration with the United States Patent and Trademark Office.

Mr. Hestenes is co-founder of ViKiwi (http://www.vikiwi.com), a technology and management consulting firm focused on using best practices from technology and business to improve the effectiveness of human work in both the private and public sectors. Previously he spent nine years at Charles Schwab where he served as Vice President of Technology and Vice President of Brokerage Operations, where he led a variety of initiatives involving open and proprietary technologies including enterprise imaging and workflow, online employee stock options trading, and delivering mutual funds advice. He also conceived and led the development of a searchable online document library used enterprise-wide by customer service representatives.

Commenting on the Community Patent Preview project, Mr. Hestenes said, “When you look at all the recent activity related to social networking, the idea of establishing a community based process that impacts actual legal decision-making is exciting and challenging. A big part of our initial focus will be on building an open architecture for participation both in the technical development and for the patent review process itself. There is a huge amount of energy around this topic; if we can tap into that energy and leverage the strength of the community, we will be successful." Asked what he views as the greatest challenge of architecting such an open peer review system, Mr. Hestenes replied: “A big challenge is to more clearly define the rules of engagement for the contributions of prior art to patent examinations. We need to ensure that community submissions are both meaningful and manageable. I am looking forward to working with legal experts and technology leaders, as well as with the technology community and software developers to improve the design. There is a lot of work to do before we're done, but the potential for long term, systemic improvements is what propels us forward."