[kazinator]

Yes; please join the "Ask Patents" stackexchange site:

http://patents.stackexchange.com/

This site is exactly for this reason: raising patent questions with the goal of identifying bad patents.

"Ask Patents is a question and answer site for people interested in improving and participating in the US patent system. It's built and run by you as part of the Stack Exchange network of Q&A sites. With your help, we're working together to find Prior Art on dangerous and overly broad US Patent Applications before they become issued Patents. "

[Alupis]

It's been said before, but I'll say it again:

The USPTO does not and will not look at nor use an end-user forums like "Ask Patents" for the basis of any decision.

[ma2rten]

At least in this case they did

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2013/07/22.html

[Alupis]

This is Joel puffing a new StackExchagne product... nothing more.

[mbrubeck]

Ask Patents is actually explicitly supported by the USPTO, who help to create it:

http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/09/askpatents-com-a-stack...

[Alupis]

No they did not.

The blog post is a puff piece for a new (at the time) StackExchange product and basically just talks about how they felt there was a need for something like this and how they felt the timing was good.

[mbrubeck]

"Helped create it" might be an exaggeration, but they definitely had a hand in its creation and have trumpeted its use: http://www.uspto.gov/news/pr/2012/12-60.jsp

From the Stack Exchange blog post, "[USPTO director Kappos] came–twice!–to the Stack Exchange office in New York City to encourage us to open a Stack Exchange site that would generate heaps of prior art to help the patent examiners do their jobs."

Last year, then-acting USPTO director Rea said in a speech, "We consulted on a private-sector initiative called Ask Patents." http://www.uspto.gov/news/speeches/2013/rea_Managing_Ip.jsp Elsewhere they refer to a "partnership" with Ask Patents.

No, this doesn't mean that prior art submitted to Ask Patents is automatically read by the USPTO. But USPTO promotes it as a way to gather information which can then be submitted through their new public comment process.

[kazinator]

Your comments may be true about most end-user forums, but it seems that "Ask Patents" really is different.

Firstly, from the help page:

"Ask Patents blocks dangerous applications by alerting the US Patent Examiner of record when good Prior Art is found for an application that he or she is examining."

Secondly, the site contains examples of patents that were rejected with the site's help. You can search for questions with the [rejected] tag:

"The rejected tag is used on patent applications and patents which have been successfully narrowed or rejected by the USPTO after having been the subject of a prior-art-request on Ask Patents."

When we search for questions with this tag, we see text like "This Patent Application received a Final Rejection by the US Patent Office! The rejection was based in part on prior art found by Ask Patents community below!"

[omglol]

Ask Patents has some good information, but also a lot of bad information or just plain wrong claims by rando's on the internet.

The USPTO has their own internal databases they look to for research information.

[tormeh]

Which works oh so very well.