New York Law School Announces International Advisory Board for the Community Patent Review Project

Report to Britain’s Chief Financial Minister Recommends Piloting NYLS’s Community Patent Review Project in the United Kingdom
 
NEW YORK, December 12, 2006 – The Institute for Information Law & Policy at New York Law School (http://dotank.nyls.edu) has announced the formation of an advisory board for the Community Patent Review Project. The board will exercise external oversight of the project and will include numerous legal, academic, and professional experts.
 
The advisory board’s mission will be to facilitate a clear process for the development of the technology and the open review process, and to ensure that decisions regarding the administration of the pilot are made in a fair and transparent manner. 
 
The Community Patent Review Project Advisory Board members are:
 
  • Tilo Bachmann, Administrator, European Patent Office
  • Robert Barr, Executive Director, Berkeley Center for Law and Technology, Berkeley Law School; former vice president for Intellectual Property and Worldwide Patent Counsel, Cisco
  • John Bracken, Program Officer, MacArthur Foundation
  • Dennis Crouch, author of award-winning patent blog, Patently-O; Visiting Assistant Professor, Boston University Law School; Associate, McDonnell Boehnen Hulbert & Berghoff LLP
  • Sean Dennehey, Director of Patents, The UK Patent Office
  • John Duffy, Professor of Law, George Washington University Law School
  • Will Fitzpatrick, Corporate Counsel, Omidyar Network
  • Alan Kasper, Vice President of the Board of Directors, American Intellectual Property Law Association; Partner, Sughrue Mion, PLLC
  • Stephen Kunin, Special Counsel, Oblon Spivak; former deputy commissioner for Patent Examination Policy, USPTO
  • Mark Lemley, Director, Stanford Program in Law, Science and Technology;
    William H. Neukom Professor of Law, Stanford Law School
  • Jay Lucas, Administrative Patent Judge, USPTO; former deputy commissioner for Patent Examination Policy, USPTO
  • Stephen Merrill, National Academies
  • Mike Messinger, Director, Sterne, Kessler Goldstein, & Fox P.L.L.C.
  • Marcus Mueller, European Patent Office, EPO Scenarios for the Future Project
  • Gideon Parchomovsky, Professor of Law, University of Pennsylvania Law School
  • Arti Rai, Professor of Law, Duke University Law School
  • Steven Weiner, Partner, Davis Polk & Wardwell
  • Terry Winograd, Professor of Computer Science, Stanford University
Advisory board member profiles are available on the Community Patent Review Web site at: http://dotank.nyls.edu/communitypatent/advisory.html.
 
The Community Patent Review Project is run by a team from New York Law School, in cooperation with an executive team from the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), and is overseen by the steering committee and the advisory board. The project was recently singled out in Gowers Review of Intellectual Property, a report released on December 6 to the United Kingdom’s top financial ministers. Andrew Gowers, former Financial Times editor, was commissioned by Britain’s Chancellor of the Exchequer to conduct an independent review of the UK’s intellectual property framework in December 2005. His report, http://www.hm-treasury.gov.uk/media/53F/C8/pbr06_gowers_report_755.pdf, examines all components of the intellectual property system and provides targeted recommendations for reforms fitting for today’s digital age.
 
Recommendation #23 of the Gowers report specifically highlights the Community Patent Review Project and calls for a pilot to be conducted in the UK in 2007.
 
“We are proud to welcome such an impressive team of experts to advise the Community Patent Review Project and honored by the program’s recent recognition in the Gowers Review,” Professor Beth Noveck, director of the Institute for Law and Policy, said.
 
About Community Patent Review
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, Computer Associates, 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