In The News: New patent idea

While on my way to work today, I was reading the new Fortune, and came across a simple but brilliant idea. Everyone knows the patent process in this country is far from perfect. The worst of it is the time it takes to get a patent. Everyone and their mother wants a patent nowadays, and, subsequently, patent officials can only give 20 hours of their time to each patent. These 20 hours are dedicated to proving the validity of the patents and researching old patents to verify if an idea is "new" or not.

Today, many patents get through that infringe on other patents, and this has created a whole mess. So here's the idea. Patent officials should utilize Wiki technology. For those of you who don't know what that is, Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia that allows anybody to modify an entry, and that process is wiki. They regulate it of course, but in a sense, everybody puts their knowledge together and creates a super-entry. What this means for patents is that a select few qualified people that know the process will be able to collaborate; put their heads together and work as a team. The odds are much better that someone in a group of 20 will be able to catch something rather than just one guy going after it himself. It's like if one guy was trying to think of some movie that came out a while ago but couldn't remember. Well, with 20 other guys, maybe somebody just watched it.

I thought it was an interesting little idea, and so perfectly simple, that it could easily be put into motion. I liked it.