Patent office email bid to attract public comments
Members of the public will now be able to comment on pending patents by email, rather than needing to contact the patent office by post, the UKPO said this week. The public can comment on anything that could affect whether a pending patent should be granted, such as if the 'invention' is not new or is obvious, or if it is of a kind excluded from patent protection.
People are encouraged to submit evidence with their observations, such as information from a trade journal or academic paper that can prove the existance of 'prior art' that pre-dates the filing date of the patent application.
Sean Dennehey, the director of patents at the UKPO, said this initiative will help maintain patent quality. "For people in business, concerned about a rival's patent application, it means that they can give us evidence that will help ensure that patent protection is granted only for inventions which truly deserve it," said Dennehey.
David Chan, a developer at Clockwork Software Systems, said the initiative was positive, but warned that it will not help the software industry if the law on what can be patented is not clarified. A proposed change in the law, known as the Computer Implemented Inventions Directive, is currently going through a second reading by the European Parliament. In its current form, some are concerned that it could allow the widespread patenting of computer programs.
"This [UKPO initiative] can only help fight software patent applications where there was prior art or some other procedural irregularity. It does not help in the case where the only irregularity is the rules which allow software patents to be granted at all," said Chan.
"What is most needed is an EU directive which very clearly excludes software patents -- unlike the current text which is full of ambiguity and contradictions which can only help the large corporations with legal departments," he said.
More information on how to comment on a patent applications can be found here. The address for email submissions can be found here.
Patent applications filed in the UK can be found by searching for a publication number starting with "GB" on the Esp@cenet Web site. This search can be narrowed by using the "applicant" field to search for patents filed by a particular company, or by searching for particular keywords in the title of the application. Any patent found using this search should be checked against the UKPO status enquiry database to check whether it is still pending. The "patent number" from the Esp@cenet Web site records equates to the "publication number" in the UKPO database.