Posts Tagged: "article one partners"

In December of 2012 Article one Partners (AOP) announced that they would be launching a new program geared towards military veterans. As someone from a family of many military veterans, I hold the utmost respect for anyone who has served in the United States Armed forces. We have been following the program and were thrilled to learn that the program was a success when they announced that Iraq war veteran Jason Maples of Mountain View CA, was the overall Winner of the Article One Partner’s Veteran Program. Renee interviewed AOP CEO Cheryl Milone about her views on the success of the program.

On May 16th, AOP announced that Iraqi war veteran, Jason Maples was the winner of its first ever AOP Vets Program. Jason was one of more than 20 other Veterans who participated in the six week program consisting of intensive education and training in patent research, web-based career learning sessions and competitive research projects. Not only did he win a $2,500 cash reward for his success in the study he partook in but also was awarded $5,000 for his overall performance. I had the pleasure of sitting down to talk with Jason recently and following is our exchange:

In December of 2012 Article One Partners announced that they would be launching an educational contest series geared towards military veterans with an interest in research, science and technology. The program, known as the Article One Partners Veterans Program or AOP-Vets for short will consist of three main pillars; an educational curriculum on patent research, a series of career guidance sessions from intellectual property executives, and an “exciting Grand Challenge” with the opportunity to win rewards for success on the research platform. In fact, at the end of the program, which is set to begin on April 8, 2013 and will run through May 17, of 2013, the best-performing participant of the program will receive a $5,000 reward.

Right now the best business to be in at the moment is the patent enforcement business, at least if you are concerning yourself with low-risk monetization with high reward. Between the legacy issue of bad patents, patent auctions and the many who purchase patents, what has started to happen is that the patent system rewards those who have the finances and ability to game the system. But the problem is extraordinarily complex.

In this agriculture search Article One Partners is not only looking for those with superior scientific training or advanced degrees. They are also hoping to expand the universe of those who will submit information relative to the study to include many who you might not ordinarily expect would have the such peculiar or specific knowledge or expertise. This call for additional researchers seeks farmers, commercial gardeners and others to rack their brains in an effort to recall things they may have seen, which could make them $5,000 richer due to the reward money that is guaranteed to be paid to the individual who submits the most relevant prior art.

Today there is a different solution for those who need to find that particularly illusive non-patent literature that typically makes up the best, most damaging prior art.  Rather than conduct the search around ever corner and under every stone you can leverage the knowledge of a global network of highly educated and highly trained researchers. Essentially, you can tap into their specific knowledge and stores of information by engaging the power of crowdsourced patent searching.

AOP, the world’s largest patent research community, has passed another significant milestone. This time the company has passed the $3 million threshold in financial rewards paid to its global research community. Actually, the milestone was reached at the end of August 2012, but AOP only officially made the announcement last week. In fact, as of the writing of this article the reward calculator found prominently on the AOP homepage shows that some $3,371,500 in reward money has been paid to its community of crowdsourcing researchers.

One of the newer prior art research studies currently underway at Article One Partners is one that relates to U.S. Patent No. 6,332,158, which relates to a system that assists user’s in selecting desired domains. This study is of particular interest because the patent in question is owned by a subsidiary of Acacia Research Corporation, which is one of the largest and most powerful of the patent assertion entities (PAE) in the industry today. The technology in question in the Acacia owned patent is a domain name lookup system and associated method. In the method a domain name query is sent from a resolver process when the user wishes to obtain information. If the domain name exists, the domain name server provides the corresponding machine address back to the user’s computer. However, when the domain name query uses a non-existent domain name then a machine address for a computer that executes a domain recommendation engine is provided. The domain recommendation engine assists the user in locating a desired domain name.

While the search for prior art won’t likely be impacted, the value of the prior art located will be dramatically impacted according to Ken Hattori, partner in the Washington, D.C. firm of Westerman, Hattori, Daniels & Adrian, LLP. “US patents with a foreign priority claim will become tremendously stronger as prior art,” says Hattori. “The subject matter disclosed in the US patent has an effectively filed date as priority date since the Hilmer doctrine is eliminated.” This is significant because “there will be no Section 112 requirement for the description of the subject matter disclosed in the foreign specification. Thus, the subject matter in a prior art US patent or application will go back to the foreign filing date as a reference.”

I have not previously noticed AOP doing Studies relative to foreign patents, but the hunt for prior art knows no boundaries and it seems only logical that some outside the United States would want to tap into the AOP network of researchers for prior art relative to non-U.S. patents. In the case of EP808484, the technology relates to online gaming and virtual worlds. The purpose of the invention is to provide a system for modeling a virtual body within a virtual environment, and controlling the movements of the virtual body in response to user body movement while providing acceptable level of realism.

So what is going on with these research Studies that seek only U.S. patents? It would seem that based on the specific details of some of these research assignments there are a growing number of entities using the AOP network to search for patents that might be able to be acquired for some strategic purpose. If that is what is going on it would be a creative way to use the AOP network of researchers to identify patents and/or patent portfolios. It also means that if you are a patent searcher and you are not frequently perusing ongoing AOP Studies you are missing an opportunity.

On May 22, 2012, STEC IP brought separate patent infringement lawsuits against Apple, Amazon and Oracle. Little information about STEC IP seems available. In the complaints filed they explain only that they are a Delaware limited liability company having a principle place of business in Greensboro, North Carolina. Under Delaware law Members of the LLC (i.e., owners) may remain anonymous, therefore, those who are behind STEC IP may remain a mystery. Of course, it is known that STEC IP is being represented by Richard Kirk of Bayard and Mark Hogge of SNR Denton, both of whom are listed as attorneys for STEC IP in the respective filings. Each of the patents asserted by STEC IP are now undergoing review by the Article One Partner’s research community.

U.S. Patent No. 6,757,068, which relates to what is described as a sourceless tracking system. See AOP Patent Study DEV-1754. The claims of this patent are extremely broad and suffer from defects not associated with prior art. A patent like the ‘068 patent is cat-nip to the anti-patent community and an all too familiar illustration that the Patent Office makes mistakes. Claim 1 is an example of something that would be deemed inappropriate on the patent bar examination because it is horribly disjointed. It should have received a rejection under 35 U.S.C. 112, 2d paragraph.