The Institute for Information Law & Policy at New York Law School (http://dotank.nyls.edu) has announced two new members of the Community Patent Review Project team, who are responsible for assisting with the development and implementation of the project for its pilot year with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO).

 

William B. Porter has joined the project as an overall project planner and consultant for intellectual property law matters, and Rahan Uddin is the full-time project coordinator. Besides overseeing the Community Patent Review Project activities on a daily basis, the team will be responsible for developing strategic plans for peer reviewer education and outreach; coordinating symposia and conferences; creating patent educational materials; and developing related legal projects, including privacy and copyright policies, notice and takedown notice, and codes of conduct.

 

Porter is admitted to practice in New York and before the USPTO, and now does consulting in the area of intellectual property law. He retired from IBM after a career that included positions in the company’s law department and in various programming-related organizations, from which he transitioned when he was senior manager of programming development technology in the area of operating system development. Upon his retirement, Porter was group counsel, intellectual property law, for the systems and technology group. In this role, he directed IBM’s IP law departments in Austin, Texas; Poughkeepsie, New York; Rochester, Minnesota; Raleigh, North Carolina; San Jose, California; and Tucson, Arizona. His education background includes a B.S. in mathematics from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, an M.A. in mathematics from Fordham University, and a J.D. from Georgetown University.

 

Uddin served as an information systems manager for The After-School Corporation (TASC), a nonprofit organization that funds, develops, and supports after-school programming in New York City’s public schools. While working full time at TASC, Uddin attended New York Law School’s Evening Division. He completed his J.D. at the Law School in the fall of 2006 and will graduate in February 2007. Uddin also worked as a project manager for The Cluen Corporation, a software development company in New York City. He graduated from The City College of The City University of New York with a B.S. in biology and a minor in psychology.

 

The Community Patent Review project is an initiative of the New York Law School Institute for Information Law & Policy in cooperation with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). Community Patent Review aims to improve the quality of issued patents by giving the patent examiner access to better information by means of an open network for community peer review of patent applications. With the sponsorship and support of the MacArthur Foundation, Omidyar Network, CA, GE, HP, IBM, Microsoft, and Red Hat, Community Patent Review (also known as “Peer to Patent” or “Open Patent Review”) will create a Web-based system that exploits network technology to connect innovation experts to patent examiners and the patent examination process. The USPTO will pilot this open review system for patent examination on 250-400 software-related patents in spring 2007. This is the first social software project that will directly impact legal decision-making. http://dotank.nyls.edu/communitypatent