Date: February 28, 2006
Hosts: Professors Terry Fisher and John Palfrey, Harvard Law School
Location: Harvard Law School, Berkman Center for Internet and Society
Topic: Managing Input

Short Description:

Once we have identified the participants in the process, we need to manage their input. Our proposal assumes that we need ways to make the input of these experts manageable and relevant to the Patent Office and visible by participants in the process. To that end, this Workshop addresses the role that collaborative filtering and information visualization technologies might play in managing the peer review process. Could Wikis be useful? Is a folksonomy necessary? Might visualization tools strengthen the community of peer reviewers? In addition to tools, what procedures and practices might be encoded into the software to make input both structured and relevant?

Date: March 17, 2006
Host: Professor Beth Simone Noveck, Democracy Design Workshop/Institute for Information Law & Policy
Location: New York Law School, New York, NY
Topic: Translating Statutory Standards into Peer Review Practices

Short Description:

To deploy a workable system, we need a way to translate the statutory standards of patent law into a set of workable practices that can be communicated to peer reviewers. This session focuses primarily on legal doctrine and “translating” it into instructions for peer reviewers. How do we measure non-obviousness? What are we measuring? What is the relevant prior art? This Workshop is largely geared toward patent practitioners and scholars and will ask them to design the practices and procedures to be realized through software.

Date: March 23, 2006
Host: Professor Paul Resnick, University of Michigan
Location: STIET Seminar, University of Michigan
Topic: Expertise

Short Description:

In order to build an expert peer review network on-line, we need to determine how we identify expertise. We start from the proposition that some kind of weighting of inputs is essential to an effective community patent system. A well-designed reputation system is one way to meet that need as it would enable the Patent Office to identify those experts qualified to judge prior art, opine on the obviousness of an invention and judge its innovative merit. This faculty presentation will solicit addition input from some of the leading experts in that field, based at the University of Michigan.

Date: May 9, 2006
Hosts: Lauren Gelman and David Olson
Location: Stanford Law School, Center for Internet and Society
Topic: HCI and the Design of Community Patent

Short Description:

This Workshop brings together renowned human-computer interface (HCI) and computer science experts with lawyers and legal scholars from Stanford and the vicinity to discuss the design of the community patent system. Once we have identified the participants in the process, we need to manage their input. Our proposal assumes that we need ways to make the input of these experts manageable and relevant to the Patent Office and visible by participants in the process. To that end, this Workshop addresses the role that collaborative filtering and information visualization technologies might play in managing the peer review process. Could Wikis be useful? Is a folksonomy necessary? Might visualization tools strengthen the community of peer reviewers? In addition to tools, what procedures and practices might be encoded into the software to make input both structured and relevant?

Date: May 12, 2006
Host: USPTO
Location: USPTO
Topic: Peer to Patent Project Launch

Short Description:

The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) will hold a briefing on May 12, 2006, from 9:00 a.m. to noon in the agency's Madison building, 600 Dulany Street, Alexandria, VA. The online peer review pilot project seeks to ensure that patent examiners will have improved access to all available prior art during the patent examination process.

As a follow-up to the February 16th meeting, this briefing will focus on further developing previously discussed initiatives as well as answering the question of what constitutes valid prior art and a greater in-depth analysis of the peer review pilot project that is under consideration.

The meeting is open to the public. However, space is limited so please register early. Only the first 220 registrations can be accepted. Additional information can be found at http://www.uspto.gov/web/patents/opensource2006.htm.

Date: May 25, 2006
Host: Institute for Public Policy Research
Location: London
Topic: Future of Intellectual Property and the Knowledge Economy

Short Description: The Institute for Public Policy Research hosted the most recent "Peer to Patent" Workshop in London on May 25. IPPR's Digital Society and Media Initiative focuses, among other topics, on the future of intellectual property and the knowledge economy. The invitation-only workshop brought together a patent-knowledgeable group of thought leaders from the public sector, industry, academia and the public interest. More information at http://cairns.typepad.com/peertopatent/2006/05/ippr_london_wor.html.

Date: June 1, 2006
Host: European Patent Office
Location: European Patent Office
Topic: International Issues - Future Scenarios and the Peer to Patent Project

Short Description: The European Patent Office hosted an invtation-only Scenarios Project workshop on June 1 in which the aim was to reflect on how the future of patenting and intellectual property might evolve over the next 15-20 years, at both European and global levels.