From: Richard K. Belew
Subject: What happened to BountyQuest?
You and I were both enthusiastic about BountyQuest when it first emerged, and your use of it to challenge Amazon certainly increased its visibility. But I haven't looked in for awhile, and just went to show it to a friend, and it's gone! The WaybackMachine shows pages only until November 2002.
Anybody know what happened to this venture in particular, or better, what the next generation of community-based prior-art searches looks like these days?
Richard K. Belew
I had high hopes for BountyQuest, too; it seemed like a great idea. But while I still believe that the failure to search for prior art remains a major problem for the patent system, the company was not able to make a successful business bridging the gap. Of course, this could simply have been an execution issue, or market timing. But it could also have been the fact that the patent mess is a thorny thicket that doesn't lend itself well to penetration by amateurs. I know that when we did the bounties on the Amazon 1-click patent, there were numerous people who sent in what they thought was important prior art, but which the attorneys who reviewed it didn't find useful. Of course, we did find some really good stuff, too--some months after we'd awarded the bounty, splitting it three ways for prior art that wasn't completely on the money, someone sent in a killer piece of prior art. I still have it on my bookshelf, in the odd event that Amazon loses its senses and sues anyone else over 1-click. (As you may recall, Amazon and B&N settled the suit, and Jeff Bezos seems to have eschewed offensive use of patents for now, partly as a result of the awakening that he had after the Net protest I led back in 2000.)
As to the next generation, my guess is that as patent attorneys get more Internet-savvy, googling for prior art and posting queries to relevant mailing lists or newsgroups are just going to become part of the routine toolkit of anyone doing patent searches.
Tim
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Showing messages 1 through 4 of 4.
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ACACIA
2003-11-12 11:54:48 anonymous2 [View]
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Use that Prior Art
2003-11-11 08:34:41 anonymous2 [View]
If you have "killer prior art" why is it sitting on you shelf? At least send it to the PTO for inclusion in the file wrapper for the patent. Or, go a step further and ask for a re-examination! (Anyone can do this.)
If the prior art sits on your shelf, it is likely to get lost. Someone who needs it can't find it. That's why the procedure exists for inserting things into the file wrapper! Also, there are going to be numerous people who won't implement one-click-like systems since their attorneys tell them that as long as Amazon's patent is still valid, it is too risky to move forward. As long as this patent is in force, it has a blocking effect on the industry (potentially preventing some innovation) even though it appears that the patent, if challenged, would fall.
If you've got prior art -- USE IT! Let's get these bad patents out of the system...
bob wyman
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Bountyquest didn't follow up with submitters
2003-11-10 08:42:08 anonymous2 [View]
I lay this firmly at Bountyquests' feet.
I submitted prior art to Bountyquest. I spent more than a year pinging BQ for ANY information about the bounty I submitted against. The answer was always "we're working on it". I never did get an answer from them.
I'm sure that there were many items submitted that weren't appropriate, but I put them blame on BQ for not following up with submitters. If they couldn't do something as simple as send an e-mail that said , "Sorry, but that's not appropriate", how are we to expect they followed up with anything else?
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Internet Savvy Patent Attorneys
2003-11-04 21:31:33 anonymous2 [View]
The concluding remark that "[as] patent attorneys get more Internet-savvy, [they will be] googling for prior art and posting queries to relevant mailing lists or newsgroup... [as] part of the routine toolkit of anyone doing patent searches" is off the mark. After all, this patent attorney found this posting.
Patent attorneys ALREADY serach "high and wide". One challenge is that they/we/I are/am not easily aided in "prior art" seaches by others because of a lay person's/engineer's/scientist's poor understanding of the legal interpretation of a patent claim, and what nexus the prior art must provide in whole and in part to render a claim anticipated (35 U.S.C. section 102) or obvious (35 U.S.C. section 103), and a patent invalid. Certainly we can try and explain this for an individual patent to hand. But all to often it takes great experience to see how prior art elements may be "woven" into a compendium which will, in total, render an issued patent invalid.
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-984698.html
http://www.fightthepatent.com/