I work for Open Invention Network and I am one of the three people that was at Akademy. You raise some good points, but they are not new to us, so I’d like to comment on a few of the things you said and hopefully you will be less offended:

* Regarding documents needing to be in the patent database, plus timestamping: the documents are put in a database on IP.com. This database is searched daily by patent offices around the world to look for prior art. This has the same effect as being put in the patent database. Other entities (IBM, ISOC, Microsoft, NIST, Lenovo and many more) also put documents in this database. The documents are timestamped and trusted and (in some instances) also sent around in printed paper form. Digital timestamping is done by IP.com, who use a combination of digital fingerprints and Surety notarization for this.

* You are correct that when you know of a direct patent threat it is much easier to deal with it. With a defensive publication you publish prior art and it might or might not prevent a patent application in the future. It is a bit of a fuzzy target and we readily admit that, but that doesn’t mean it is worthless. Even if a single defensive publication that you wrote avoids a patent lawsuit in the future because a patent was never granted, it’s a win, especially because it is very cheap compared to trying to invalidate an existing patent.

* In Europe there already is a system in place that allows you to submit prior art when there is a patent application (“pre-grant submission”). In the US a similar system (but free and allowing anonymous submissions of prior art) will be launched in September. We will gladly assist with this as well.

* Patent applications are indeed very powerful. Come talk to us if you want to file a patent.

armijn

“Prior art” – patent professionals will dispute that – means de facto a prior document in the patent database. Patent offices do not search the internet. When your “prior art” is not documented in the form of patent legalese it is second class evidence and you rely on abitrary interpretation in Courts. Other issues, for instance, how is your document time-stamped and “published”? I am aware of so many anecdotal cases where professionals brought IT standard literature to the Courts and failed, because a combination of p.212-215 with p. 456 was considered “new”. It is hard to falsify novelty.

A more workable method of “defensive publication” is to file a patent application (you can let the patent application lapse by not paying the renewal fees). Unfortunately the art of writing technical documentation and the art of writing patents are completely distinct professions. The perfect advise for “defensive publication” in the form described above would be a text generator that remixes existing patents ;-)