Crowdsourcing is used for everything now from determining books to read to creating maps. Why not use it to find prior art in patent cases? That’s what Article One Partners does - it offers prizes ($50,000 in its first successful effort) to those who find what the company (not the courts) determine is prior confirmation that a patent’s idea existed before the patent was granted. It’s one way a patent can be invalidated by the courts.
The company’s first effort paid off: two individuals found prior art related to a patent for a touch screen keyboard that can’t be moved, resized or changed on a device. The patent holder SP Technologies has already made deals with Apple and Magellan and has ongoing litigation against others in GPS including TomTom. When Garmin was sued in 2008, Patent One announced its first contest to find prior art against the patent. And, it determined, such publicly available material was found. The two contributors will split the $50,000.
This sounds like a great model to tap into “experts” as advisors to support or invalidate patents. If you are interested, the company has announced seven new patent studies including one exploring Apple’s multi-touch patent.
How does the company make money? It licenses the results of its “contests.”
