The US patent office – United States Patent and Trademark Office – will cooperate with software developers software free in order to improve the quality of his patents and react to criticisms that accuse him of working with little depth in the analysis of pieces of software that are put to your appreciation, especially with regard to comparison with works already legally protected by property rights.
Work with the community open source will materialize in three different projects that aim to provide the organism’s researchers with new assessment tools. One of the initiatives provides for the use of an open review program that will install a system on the office’s website, through which visitors can submit search criteria. A second initiative foresees the subscription of electronic alerts on the application of patents in certain areas. Both aim to improve the circulation of information and reduce cases of abuse of concepts already patented.
The third planned initiative aims to create a quality index that will be used by programmers who design applications based on patented concepts.
The initiatives now underway were desired with the support of companies such as IBM, which leads the project to create an automatic system for creating series of categories to organize software written by programmers open source. It is this system that, once completed, will be made available to patent examiners so that they can investigate previously patented concepts that may intersect.
It is expected that the application of the new system will have a significant effect on the patent registration mechanism and will even help to reduce the legal issues related to this matter, as it will be an important help for the office itself to deal better with all the information accumulated at the time. over the years.
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