[Federal Register Volume 79, Number 53 (Wednesday, March 19, 2014)]
[Notices]
[Pages 15319-15321]
From the Federal Register Online via the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
[FR Doc No: 2014-05996]
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DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE
United States Patent and Trademark Office
[Docket No. PTO-P-2014-0013]
Request for Comments and Notice of Roundtable Event on the Use of
Crowdsourcing and Third-Party Preissuance Submissions To Identify
Relevant Prior Art
AGENCY: United States Patent and Trademark Office, Commerce.
ACTION: Notice of public meeting; request for comments.
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SUMMARY: The United States Patent and Trademark Office (Office) is
hosting a roundtable event to solicit public opinions regarding the use
of crowdsourcing and third-party preissuance submissions to identify
relevant prior art and enhance the quality of examination as well as
the quality of issued patents. Members of the public are invited to
participate. The roundtable will provide a forum for an informal
discussion of the topics identified in this notice. Written comments in
response to these topics also are requested.
DATES: Event: The roundtable event will be held on April 10, 2014,
beginning at 12:30 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time (EDT), and ending at 5:00
p.m. EDT.
Registration: Registration to attend the roundtable in person or
via webcast is required by April 4, 2014. Additionally, members of the
public who wish to participate in the roundtable as a speaker must do
so by request in writing no later than March 27, 2014. See the ``Event
Registration Information'' section of this notice for additional
details on how to register.
Comments: Any member of the public, whether attending the
roundtable or not, may submit written comments on any of the topics
identified in part III of the Supplementary Information section, below,
for consideration by the Office. Written comments must be received on
or before April 25, 2014, to ensure consideration. Persons submitting
written comments should note that the Office will not provide a
response because this notice is not a notice of proposed rulemaking.
Written comments should be sent by electronic mail addressed to
[email protected]. Comments also may be submitted
by postal mail addressed to: Mail Stop Comments--Patents, Commissioner
for Patents, P.O. Box 1450, Alexandria, VA 22313-1450, marked to the
attention of Nicole Dretar Haines. Although comments may be submitted
by postal mail, the Office prefers to receive comments by electronic
mail.
Comments will be available for public inspection via the Office's
Internet Web site at http://www.uspto.gov/patents/init_events/index.jsp, and at the Office of the Commissioner for Patents, located
in Madison East, Tenth Floor, 600 Dulany Street, Alexandria, VA 22314,
upon request. Because comments will be available for public inspection,
information that is not desired to be made public, such as an address
or phone number, should not be included in the comments.
[[Page 15320]]
ADDRESSES: The roundtable event will be held at the Office, Madison
Auditorium South, Concourse Level, Madison Building, 600 Dulany Street,
Alexandria, VA 22314.
Event Registration Information: Registration is required by April
4, 2014, to attend the roundtable in person or via Webcast.
Additionally, members of the public who wish to participate in the
roundtable as a speaker must do so by request in writing no later than
March 27, 2014.
To register or request to present as a speaker, please send an
email message to [email protected] and provide the
following information: (1) Your name, title, and if applicable, company
or organization, address, phone number, and email address; (2) whether
you wish to attend in person or via webcast; and (3) if you wish to
make an oral presentation at the roundtable, which of the topics
identified in part III of the SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION section, below,
will be addressed and the approximate desired length of your
presentation. Each attendee, even if from the same organization, must
register separately.
Due to time constraints, the Office may not be able to accommodate
all persons who wish to make a presentation. However, the Office will
attempt to accommodate as many persons who wish to make a presentation
as possible within the time constraints. After reviewing the list of
speakers and the information regarding the presentations provided in
the registration, the Office will contact each speaker prior to the
event with the amount of time available and the approximate time that
the speaker's presentation is scheduled to begin. The amount of time
available for each presentation may be limited to ensure that all
persons selected to speak will have a meaningful chance to do so.
Speakers who opt to employ slides as part of their presentation must
send final electronic copies of the slides in Microsoft PowerPoint to
[email protected] by April 4, 2014, so that the
slides can be displayed at the roundtable. Additionally, the Office
will provide an opportunity for persons in the audience not previously
selected as speakers to speak at the roundtable without a formal
presentation.
The Office plans to make the roundtable event available via
webcast. Webcast information will be available on the Office's Internet
Web site before the roundtable event at http://www.uspto.gov/patents/init_events/index.jsp.
If special accommodations due to a disability are needed, please
inform the contact person(s) identified below.
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Requests for additional information
regarding registration and speaker presentations should be directed to
the attention of Jack Harvey, Director, Technology Center 2800, by
telephone at 571-272-8004, or by email to [email protected].
Requests for additional information regarding the topics for written
comments and discussion at the roundtable event should be directed to
Nicole Dretar Haines, Senior Legal Advisor, Office of Patent Legal
Administration, by telephone at 571-272-7717, or by email to
[email protected].
SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:
I. Purpose of Notice: This notice announces a roundtable event to
solicit public input concerning the topics identified in part III,
below, relating to the use of crowdsourcing and third-party preissuance
submissions to identify relevant prior art and enhance the quality of
examination as well as the quality of issued patents. Specifically, the
Office is seeking comments on the potential uses of crowdsourcing
during patent examination, as well as ways for increasing the quality
and volume of third-party preissuance submissions. The public is
invited to provide comments on these topics and to identify future
topics for discussion.
II. Background: Over the past year, the Office has solicited ideas
from the software community through the Software Partnership to enhance
the quality of software-related patents. In response, the public has
proposed crowdsourcing as a technique to expand the prior art available
to examiners. Further, crowdsourcing prior art was identified as a
means to strengthen patent quality in the executive actions announced
by the White House on February 20, 2014. While crowdsourcing was
suggested in the context of the Software Partnership, the Office is
exploring strategies to use crowdsourcing to obtain relevant prior art
and enhance the quality of examination across all technology areas.
Information on the Software Partnership may be found at http://www.uspto.gov/patents/init_events/software_partnership.jsp and
information on the White House executive actions is available at http://www.uspto.gov/patents/init_events/executive_actions.jsp.
Crowdsourcing has the potential to help examiners in certain
technology areas, such as software, where information that resides
within the technical community is often not readily available to
examiners. Existing crowdsourcing Web sites have made use of third-
party preissuance submissions to submit prior art to examiners. The
preissuance submissions by third parties provision of the America
Invents Act permits third parties to submit relevant prior art
publications to patent examiners with a concise description of
relevance. See Changes To Implement the Preissuance Submissions by
Third Parties Provision of the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act, 77 FR
42150 (July 17, 2012). The Office is seeking ways to improve the
quality and increase the volume of third-party submissions, and
utilizing crowdsourcing may be one promising avenue for achieving these
goals. Aside from increasing the quality and quantity of third-party
submissions, the Office is exploring other ways that crowdsourcing may
help examiners identify relevant prior art during examination and
contribute to the quality of issued patents.
III. Topics for Written Comments and Discussion at the Roundtable
Event: The Office seeks comments on the following topics regarding the
current third-party submission process and ways the Office can use
crowdsourcing to improve the quality of examination:
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?
The Office also seeks comments on any additional topics, not listed
above, that might serve as a basis for future discussions regarding the
current third-party submission process and ways the Office can use
crowdsourcing to improve the quality of examination.
[[Page 15321]]
Dated: March 12, 2014.
Michelle K. Lee,
Deputy Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Deputy
Director of the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
[FR Doc. 2014-05996 Filed 3-18-14; 8:45 am]
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