Peer-to-Patent - Evaluation

Evaluation

As of November 24, 2010, there had been 557,560 page views from 114,395 unique viewers in 173 countries or territories. More than 2, 800 people signed up to be reviewers.

Up-to-date statistics about the number of patent applications submitted to Peer To Patent, the number of community participants searching for prior art, and the amount of discussion around each patent can be obtained from the Peer To Patent web site.

Some highlights from the First Anniversary report:

• Peer To Patent attracted more than 2,000 peer reviewers.
• The first 27 office actions issued during the pilot phase showed use of Peer To Patent submitted prior art in nine rejections
• On average, citizen-reviewers contributed 6 hours reviewing each patent application in the pilot
• Although USPTO rules permit third-party prior art submissions on pending applications (but only before the applications have been published, or before a notice of allowance is issued, whichever comes first), the average number of prior art submissions on Peer To Patent applications was 2,000 times that of standard rule-based submissions.
• 92% of patent examiners surveyed said they would welcome examining another application with public participation, while 73% of participating examiners want to see Peer-to-Patent implemented as a regular office practice.
• 21% of participating examiners stated that prior art submitted by the Peer To Patent community was "inaccessible" directly to USPTO examiners.
• Prior art submissions by Peer-to-Patent reviewers were four times as likely to include non-patent literature (any document that is not a patent, including Web sites, journals, textbooks, and databases) as compared to prior art submissions by applicants.