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Why IBM Supports USPTO Patent Quality Initiatives

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by Manny Schecter
IBM Chief Patent Counsel

IBM congratulates the White House and the US Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO) for recently announced Executive Actions relating to crowdsourcing prior art and more ro-bust technical training and expertise for patent examiners. IBM supports these initiatives to improve patent examination quality.

As members of the public and patentees, we all should have an interest in improving patent examination, and thus patent quality. We should favor correct examination at the outset rather than trying to address a wrongly granted patent after issuance – when both the burden of proving invalidity and the cost of doing so are higher and the public has already expended considerable resources avoiding infringement.

For 21 consecutive years, IBM has been the leading recipient of US patents and, through-out this period, we have consistently supported efforts to advance and enable robust pat-ent examination. We organized the Peer to Patent pilot project, in conjunction with New York Law School and the USPTO that demonstrated the feasibility of crowdsourcing prior art, and was particularly effective at identifying non-patent technical literature. We promoted the third-party submission of prior art provisions of the America Invents Act to enable the benefits of crowdsourcing prior art to become part of the examination process for all patents. In addition, we have for several decades published technical journals and documentation — including the IBM Technical Disclosure Bulletin — that are among the non-patent technical literature most widely cited by patent examiners during patent ex-amination. Finally, we have long cooperated with the USPTO in providing technical education for patent examiners and we will continue to do so.

The patent system benefits us all by promoting innovation. We call on other users of the patent system to join IBM in supporting and assisting the USPTO in enhancing the qual-ity of patent examination.



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