Peer-to-Patent Australia trial completes community review phase
23 Jun 2010
The community review phase of the inaugural Peer-to-Patent Australia pilot project has now ended.
Peer-to-Patent Australia is a web-based initiative aimed at supporting patent examination and improving the quality of issued patents in Australia. This is a joint project of the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) and IP Australia that was launched in December 2009. The project's chief investigators are Professor Brian Fitzgerald and Ben McEniery.
In all, 31 pending patent applications were put forward voluntarily by participating applicants and made available for review on the Peer-to-Patent Australia website for a period of 90 days. Between December 2009 and June 2010, the community of 129 reviewers generated 106 prior art references in response to the participating patent applications. Those prior art references are now being considered by IP Australia's patent examiners as part of the formal examination process.
The Peer-to-Patent Australia project provides an online platform for members of the public to put forward prior art references for consideration by IP Australia's patent examiners during examination. The object of the pilot is to test whether an open community of reviewers can uncover relevant prior art that might not otherwise be found by IP Australia during a routine examination and thus contribute to improving the validity of granted patents. The trial also supports current e-Government projects which seek to encourage citizen engagement in Government decision-making, encourage a more collaborative research community and tackle barriers to innovation.
The project is now entering a six month evaluation phase. During this phase, both IP Australia and QUT will evaluate the pilot's success. The results of the pilot will be made available in December 2010.
Last Updated: 15/9/2012
