Modern Times Legal Patent Blog

USPTO Goes Wiki

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USPTO Director David Kappos is on a role. On his Director's Blog today, he writes about his ideas for taking the Manual of Patent Examination Procedure (i.e., what might be viewed as the bible for US patent examination) open source. Perhaps we all can soon become co-authors of a much more dynamic MPEP.

I provided a couple comments on the blog, in particular advocating for including links for case citations to the actual court decisions, preferably in citation-friendly form to perhaps avoid the need to pay extortionate fees to obtain recognizable citations to the decisions from our nation's courts. I also commented on how I liked the intriguing interplay and juxtaposition both (a) between the proprietary rights of patents and open-sourced knowledge and (b) between the government and the people. Sounds like great fodder for a compelling article in Wired, no?