US Patent Office Teams With Google On Database 82
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.'"
By lacks technical capability they really mean... (Score:5, Funny)
...that technically developing their own system would infringe on too many patents.
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It's funny, but it's true.
What will happen if someone tries to troll the patent office once this final contractor job is done? I could see someone sticking the patent office with an "on the web" suit if this thing is supposed to be accessible to the public.
Maybe, then, we'll get some real reform.
car analogy (Score:2)
You can't patent the way you drive your car. So why can you patent instructions to a computer?
Patent the device. Not how you use it.
If you want to write a book about your driving method, you would get a copyright. Same applies to software.
Software and business method patents need to go away.
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Patenting software is like patenting math.
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You can't patent the way you drive your car....
Are you sure [freepatentsonline.com] about that?
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If I understand correctly, the "monopoly" aspect of patent restrictions don't apply to the government. The government can use any patented invention without restriction, but the patent holder is entitled to claim compensation [about.com] from the government. So there may be some truth to your witty observation, due to cost of compensation.
Related, note that often government contractors [invention-protection.com] may be immune to patent infringement claims.
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 (Score:4, Funny)
Certainly could be good for Google if all of Microsoft's patents somehow end up showing up as Google patents :p
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Really to think that Google's getting anything out of this is kind of ... well ... funny.
They're getting good PR from it. I say "Yay, Google!"
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They're getting a public more empowered to see the ludicrous situation the PTO is in lately and to challenge silly patents which never should have been granted. As Google writes much software and software patents tend to be easily gained and broadly protected (think MPEG-LA and H.264) that can only be a good thing for them as well as everyone else who isn't a patent troll.
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Welp, firstly you said was complaining no I didn't complain I was saying "If I was Google I'd do it".
Second, your telling me that there is nothing confidential about USPTO? Right, okay .... Next please!
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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 c
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Okay, here it is, I've never worked for UPSTO so I can't be 100% certain but I have worked for government organizations and understand the concept of process.
Public information is the result. I.E Patent Pending, approved, rejected, whatever ... That's the result.
Business names are public domain, Trademarks a public domain. Does that mean we see the 10 page application form leading up to the "resulted" public domain information or as the public do we simply get to the see the cliff notes?
Google has basically
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I might add, Google is also getting direct access to this "public domain" data.
The "public" gets single keyword query access to it.
That alone demonstrates a conflict of interest because it enables Google to draw analytical data from the database that noone else in the world could possibly generate (except for maybe UPSTO)
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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?
Analytics. There's probably a lot of potential intelligence to be gleaned since, according to the article, Google will actually be hosting the site.
I hope they steer clear of that, but if they collect too much data it could open up quite a few cans of worms. "Oh hey, Microsoft's legal department has been searching for ____ patents lately and keeps going back to these patent numbers."
Really to think that Google's getting anything out of this is kind of ... 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 ...
I'd rather see Google develop the code, database, application, whatever else needs to be done, and have it hosted on PTO ser
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.
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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.
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wha?
how could a company not index google's data? It's not like it's hidden. Google even lets people search within PDFs and things that don't explicitly have text data.
This sounds less like a paywall and a lot more like "here's a book. go read it"
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The interest in any one or sets patent getting more reads than the 'average' of others could be useful too.
Trends start to form, think of the logged search data before and after after you register a patent.
Thats a lot of unique long term marketing and predictive power linked back to a unique person.
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yes, clickstream data, etc. Remind me again what does this have to do with other people being able to harness the patent information itself, which was the purpose?
google already owns the search share, whether you open a patent link or not they already know what you are searching for. It's not exactly a whole lot of extra information.
Now your concept of using that data to determine patents, etc? What makes you think google even cares? It's the courts that matter. If they really need something invalidated th
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I should add, since when was data for paying customers ever free? "free for personal use, pay for corporate use" has been the motto of most licenses/software for significantly more years than it should be.
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What?
"A patent (pronounced /pætnt/ or /petnt/) is a set of exclusive rights granted by a state (national government) to an inventor or their assignee for a limited period of time in exchange for a public disclosure of an invention."
How is access to already public information invaluable?
I can see a small advantage in being able to search it with better algoritms though.
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Gee i donno, a big fucken database given to a big fucken advertising firm ...
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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?
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The same way they profit from all the other websites they offer free of charge...by slapping some of their ads on?
Hmm...context-sensitive ads in a search engine for patents...I see potential for giggles.
Patenting code. (Score:2)
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This could be a step towards making it impossible - if Google make it a great deal easier to do a patent search for software, then it will get done more often. This will be shortly followed by a wider spread realization that you can't write any significant program without infringing a disastrous number of patents, which will hopefully lead to a larger lobby against patenting software.
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Except mathematical algorithms aren't supposed to be patentable.
That's nice. (Score:2)
Hopefully the patent examiners will check it themselves before approving applications.
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?
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Don't you know that contractors are always better? (Score:5, Informative)
You don't understand how government IT works these days.
Most government IT shops in the U.S. have not yet recovered from the election of Bush the Younger. When he came into office, the overall attitude of the new guys in charge was that they hated government, hated government workers, and believed that it was a God-given truth that all government workers are incompetent at all things they do. Thus, anything that could be contracted out must be contracted out. Internal IT got downsized, outsourced, demoralized, broken, and spat on in many, many places.
Just as an aside, this idiocy reached such insane heights that high-level executives at one government agency [irs.gov] actually floated a plan to do away with internal local IT support and replace it, where feasible, with something called "depot maintenance." Reduced to nuts and bolts, they actually considered contracting with Best Buy for certain instances of in-the-field deskside support! This made perfect sense to the bigwigs. After all, Best Buy is private industry so they must be more competent than anyone who actually works for the agency, right?
That attitude crippled many agencies and most have yet to recover. Even if Google built the system and handed it over with a ribbon around it, it's likely that the executives at USPTO would go looking for a contractor to charge lots of money to run the thing. (Disclaimer: I'm not there; I'm just speaking from broad experience with multiple agencies. I hope somone from USPTO will chime in.)
It's just part of the culture. I know it seems bad, but eventually people will wake up to the fact that if you keep electing people who believe that all government is bad, the result is going to be...well...bad government. Self-fulfilling prophecy and all that, doncha know.
Re:Don't you know that contractors are always bett (Score:4, Informative)
I was a federal IT employee during the time when all this outsourcing got going, there should still be paperwork with my signature contracting out jobs, I read all the paperwork on doing it and everything else and it start and was organized by ex-President Clinton. All the studies, reports, and decisions continued in the Bush administration came from Clinton.
The main reason Clinton gave for outsourcing everything had the main points of being cheaper, being able to get the job done(not able to hire enough federal employees and flexibility of not being locked in with the federal employees and the loss of new skills that gave.
Now all this new insourcing the reports and analysis they are using are all coming from studies ordered during the Bush administration, except they are ignoring the warning given in the reports and just told people to insource. This is now leading to people building up empires and it is now costing more then the proposed cost saving. You did have President Bush allowing more experimentation to see if some positions would save money and generate similar results some worked out and others were failures and insourced.
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I have lots of reasons to hate Bush and the problems that hit my agency while he was Prez are, actually, fairly low on that list. He screwed up lots of other things, too. And "hate" is too strong a word, implying a personal animosity that doesn't exist in this case. I just think he was a lousy president.
As for it all starting under Clinton, I'll take your word for it. After Clinton personally (I repeat: *personally*) killed a project I was peripherally involved with, I never had much use for the guy. Y
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It existed before and not really has changed. Take for instance the job I currently work, when I came in as a contractor there were 4 people working it, myself and 3 federal employees, over the last couple of years those people were moved to other duties and what was done increase, no problem I have a lo
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You make a good point. I've seen several situation like you describe, as well as variations thereof.
Anecdote: A friend of mine retired a while back. He was incredibly stressed and overworked. He was extremely competent and hardworking, but the crushing workload eventually wore him out. He'd been asking for help for years.
He was a GS 11. When he retired, management put a new person in the job, tried that for a while, then re-assessed the situation. When all was said and done, that single GS 11 employee
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The best solution is graceful failure.
Elements include
* every positive attitude
* identify critical vs non-critical
* fail to meet deadlines
* do quality work otherwise
Management is blind to your true capability- they will walk you over a cliff. They are taught until things start failing, the staff isn't really at capacity yet. And that's true. It's the only real way to know. People bitch and complain and then go back to browsing and posting on slashdot.
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Excellent points.
I've had extensive "quality improvement process" training. The best lessons I've learned concern "facilitating failure." Unfortunately, until something fails, it doesn't get fixed.
I have to occasionally remind myself of that.
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Yes, the Clinton administration did bring a push for an overhaul to inefficient government. The entire program was to be led by his Vice President and it was. And they accomplished setting the program into motion but as with any government program things take time and the whole idea fit well with the Republican base which is why much of it was continued, although not all and not under the same name--which is why some people are confused.
In the end this is just another level in the on-going and fruitless bat
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You don't understand how government IT works these days.
Most government IT shops in the U.S. have not yet recovered from the election of Bush the Younger. When he came into office, [cut for sanity]
Right, it's all Bush's fault. Just like everything else.
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Why not have Google spend two-years building the interface with a plan to turn control of it over to USPTO employees in 2012?
How exactly does any government employee get a kickback from that scheme?
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Well, I dunno, but if I was going to guess who was going to be in a position to offer the lowest bid to USPTO, I'd think it would be the one that had already sunk the costs for much of the work, and who thus would most likely have the least additional cost if they got the contract.
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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.
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Yes, because we want an international private business controlling who can see the patent office.
Remember the very recent break in at google by Chinese agents working against their human rights movement [slashdot.org]? Yes, let's set up a situation where we could hand over all of our patents to the very lax IP enforcement of china.
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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.
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No, the initial post was mostly a troll to try and stir some conversation. Seems to have worked though.
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THis is kind of stupid (Score:4, Interesting)
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I think the point is that the UPTO doesn't have the expertise to build any of this in-house, so they're looking for someone to do it for them and in the meantime letting Google give access to the information. Seems a reasonable solution to me.
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Keep in mind that it is not just the data, but the ability to access it quickly that matters. USPTO will never get up there quickly. So, they should provide a means for others to provide it. That is why I suggest creating a DB that makes it easy for all engines to access. And as long as they provide NONE DISC
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.
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http://www.google.com/googlebooks/uspto.html [google.com]
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Yeah, that's not the same thing, is it? I don't want Google getting their hands on free bulk electronic government data before anyone else.
The TESS [uspto.gov] has been in place since 2000, for example, with subscriptions available to anyone who wants them and without favouring any particular corporation or individual. Notice how many months newer the searchable database is than the bulk downloads available from Google?
I mean, what could a corporation do with early access to an electronic copy of trademarks and patents
search on patents that don't exist (Score:2)
Google Needs to Do this for More Public Data (Score:3, Interesting)
They really need to hit these pay-wall for public information businesses hard. I am tired of paying Thompson-West $250/Month for access to cases that my own tax dollars paid for. If they can monetize the process with advertising, the government can get a cut, and the whole process could end up actually saving tax payers money. Maybe the PTO can hire a few more people.
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They already use prison labor...didja know that? (Score:2)
Bet you didn't know this. As I've posted, I just spent a few years at lovely (cough) FCI Elkton [bop.gov] in Ohio. As with most BOP facilities, Elkton has a UNICOR [unicor.gov] "factory" where inmates work for up to $1 per hour, (though most make much, much less) to turn out furniture (Living in a dorm? It's probably got UNICOR furniture), mattresses, fencing, various types of wire, signs, lockers, filters, even prescription eyewear. And they also make guided missile components, batteries, injection molds, even power transformer
This is just about BULK downloads (Score:2)
The USPTO has had their patent files on line for years. They're at the USPTO site. [uspto.gov] There's a reasonable search engine. Not only are the patents themselves there, but the whole "file wrapper" history information is available. However, it's rate limited to about 1000 patents per day per user.
What Google is doing, apparently, is making the entire database available for bulk download. The USPTO sells that database, and the other patent-indexing services buy it. But you have to get it on Digital Linear
Oh, oh, Jeff Bezos is getting in on this! (Score:2)
There's value in search strings & their whois (Score:2)
One question is: will Google record (and post-process) search strings and the ip addresses associated with them? Or will searches be anonymous?
If the former, there is (potentially) great value in knowing that (for example) Microsoft is searching for prior art related to "concurrent interactive television for network connected devices"