CROWDSOURCING:
The Killer App of the Patent Wars
By Cheryl Milone and Peter Vanderheyden
A RTICLE ONE
PA R T NER S
a: 555 Madison Avenue, 30th Fl. New York, NY 10022
p: 888.737.0772 e: [email protected]
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CROWDSOURCING: The Killer App of the Patent Wars
2
Contents
INTERESTING TIMES FOR BUSINESS / 3
THE ACHILLES HEEL OF PATENTS / 4
A WHOLE NEW TREASURE TROVE OF PRIOR ART / 5
AND MORE WAYS TO USE PRIOR ART / 7
CROWDSOURCING GIVES COMPANIES THE EDGE / 9
ARTICLE ONE COMMUNITY OVERVIEW / 10
MEASURING SUCCESS / 13
FROM THE CLIENT’S PERSPECTIVE / 14
BUILDING A BETTER PATENT SYSTEM / 16
CONTACT INFORMATION / 16
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CROWDSOURCING: The Killer App of the Patent Wars
Interesting Times for Business
The saying goes, “May you live in interesting times.” Whether intended as a blessing or curse, businesses clearly face interesting times today — if only because of the
Apple and Google,
the world’s top two
innovators, now spend
more on patents and
patent litigation than
on R&D.
growing patent wars.
Technology companies are now spending literally billions of dollars to beef up their
patent arsenals and litigate them. In the surging smartphone market, meanwhile, the
major players have unleashed a huge torrent of patent suits against each other.
The stakes couldn’t be higher. The telecommunications industry has seen a record
number of litigations recently. Look at any smartphone maker and you can find their
brand as a party to litigation today. For example, Apple and Samsung are involved
in 50 patent fights in 10 countries against each other, with billions of dollars and
market share hanging in the balance.
It’s gotten so bad, in fact, that according to the New York Times, Apple and Google,
the world’s top two innovators, now spend more on patents and patent litigation
than on R&D.1
But it’s not just the large technology and smartphone companies that are at-risk. Midsized and smaller companies in a host of industries are being targeted by a species
of litigant known as “patent trolls,” who are to patent law what ambulance chasers
are to personal injury law.
Mid-sized companies
New research by Colleen Chien at the Santa Clara University School of Law found
with less than $1
that small and mid-sized companies with less than $1 billion in revenues now com-
billion in revenues
prise 90 percent of unique defendants in patent troll suits. Firms with less than $100
million in revenues represent 66 percent of defendants.2 Of the companies targeted
now comprise 90
in such suits, 40 percent reported that they suffered a “significant operational impact”
percent of unique
as a result — defined as a business strategy pivot, an exit from a business or line of
defendants in patent
troll suits.
business, a delay in hiring or meeting an operational milestone, or a reduction in the
value of the firm. Even retail businesses have been sued simply for using technology
like wifi that others claim is patented.
1 Charles Duhigg and Steve Lohr, “The Patent, Used as a Sword,” The New York Times, October 7, 2012, derived from: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/08/technology/patent-wars-among-tech-giants-can-stifle-competition.
html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
2 Colleen Chien, “Startups and Patent Trolls,” Santa Clara University School of Law, Research Paper No. 09-12,
September, 2012, derived from: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2146251.
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CROWDSOURCING: The Killer App of the Patent Wars
THE TOTAL COST TO BUSINESS?
A 2011 Boston University School of Law study found that patent litigation has cost
public companies roughly $80 billion in lost wealth in each of the last four
years — and an astonishing $500 billion in lost wealth over the past 20 years as
a whole.3
Patent litigation has
cost public companies
WHAT’S DRIVING THESE PATENT WARS?
roughly $80 billion in
It’s the new Knowledge Economy, in which intellectual property has become the
lost wealth in each of
chief source of competitive and financial advantage. Forty years ago, 70 percent of
the last four years...
the market value of all public companies lay in their tangible physical assets — their
plant, equipment, and raw materials. But today it is intangible assets such as intellectual property, know-how, and business methods that comprise up to 70 percent of
the market value of publicly-traded companies — not to mention more than half the
value of the entire U.S. economy.4
Where businesses once fought for control of raw materials or distribution channels,
today it is property rights in new technologies — i.e., patents — that offer companies the greatest value and leverage. This has created a whole new landscape of
competition — one that presents both dangers and opportunities to businesses of
every size and description.
The challenge, then, is to minimize the former and maximize the latter.
The Achilles Heel of Patents
What many companies don’t realize, though, is that half the time a patent gun is
leveled at them, it’s loaded with blanks not real bullets.
That’s right, about half of the patents asserted against companies are invalidated
when litigated in court or re-examined by the USPTO during what’s known as an
inter partes review. If you include patents whose claims are narrowed as well as cancelled entirely — and it’s the claims that define the limits of a patent’s value and an
3 James Bessen, Jennifer Ford, and Mike Meurer, “The Private and Social Costs of Patent Trolls,” Boston University
School of Law Working Paper No. 11-45, November 9, 2011, derived from: http://www.bu.edu/law/faculty/
scholarship/workingpapers/2011.html
4 Kevin A. Hassett and Robert J. Shapiro, “What Ideas Are Worth: The Value of Intellectual Capital and Intangible
Assets in the American Economy,” Sonecon, 2012.
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CROWDSOURCING: The Killer App of the Patent Wars
infringer’s liability — then a staggering 89 percent of all patents reviewed by the
USPTO are judged either partly or wholly invalid.5
A staggering 89
WHY SO MANY INVALID PATENTS?
percent of all patents
reviewed by the USPTO
The Achilles Heel of any patent is the “prior art.” Prior art refers to any previous patent, technical paper, on-sale activity, or public use of knowledge of an invention that
are judged either partly
makes it ineligible for a patent. Under the law, a patent may only be issued if an
or wholly invalid.
invention is useful, novel (i.e., not previously known or described) and non-obvious
— meaning, not an obvious or inevitable outgrowth of an existing technology or
invention. It’s the prior art that determines whether an invention meets the novelty and
non-obviousness criteria.
Unfortunately, like all government agencies, the USPTO’s system for finding prior art
to determine whether an invention truly merits a patent or not is not perfect. Despite
the best efforts of USPTO examiners to review all patent applications carefully; prior
art can be missed and patents are issued that later evidence will show, were issued
in error. A variety of factors come into play, but limits in time, available data, technological search tools, and human experience are those most likely to cause patents
to be issued in error
Add to this a four-fold increase in patent applications over the last 20 years — without a commensurate increase in USPTO funding or staffing — and one can easily
appreciate the challenges facing the patent office today. In fact, given that patent
The Achilles Heel
examiners are only allotted a couple of hours at most to research and evaluate all
of any patent
the prior art for a patent application, it’s no surprise that a good deal of relevant
is the
“
”
prior art.
prior art remains undetected.
A Whole New Treasure Trove of Prior Art
Now, thanks to the provisions of the new America Invents Act (AIA) patent reform
law of 2011, beginning March 16, 2013, several new kinds of prior art will also
be able to transform a U.S. patent from a potent competitive weapon into literally a
worthless piece of paper.
5 Derived from USPTO: http://www.uspto.gov/patents/stats/IP_quarterly_report_June_30_2012.pdf
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CROWDSOURCING: The Killer App of the Patent Wars
UNPUBLISHED PATENT APPLICATIONS:
“ Foreign patents and
applications will now
make it much easier
to challenge issued
U.S. patents.
”
- Gene Quinn,
For the first time, unpublished patent applications — i.e., patent applications in the
USPTO system less than 18 months — can be used to invalidate a later patent if
these contain prior art that anticipates the claimed invention.
FOREIGN PATENTS AND APPLICATIONS:
For the first time as well, foreign patents and applications will be able to invalidate
a later U.S. patent or application if they contain prior art that anticipates the claimed
invention.
IPWatchdog
According to Gene Quinn of the influential IPWatchdog blog, “Foreign patents and
applications will now make it much easier to challenge issued U.S patents.”6
On Sale or Public Use Anywhere in the World:
But probably the biggest increase in prior art’s power to invalidate patents involves
on sale and “public use” — i.e., has a patented invention been previously used,
offered for sale, or publicly disclosed? — which has now been expanded from the
U.S. to cover the entire globe.
This means that even a seminar discussion about some interesting new technology
at an engineering conference in Korea or China — presented in the Korean or
Mandarin language — will be able to kill a U.S. patent that is later acquired on
that technology. All that’s required is that the “public use” occurred 12 months prior
to the filing of the patent.
And make no mistake: there are many examples of foreign prior art invalidating
patents. In perhaps the most famous case, Blackberry device maker Research in
Motion (RIM) agreed to pay $612 million to patent holder NTP in 2006 to settle
an infringement case. But would RIM have paid up had it known that the USPTO
would later rule the majority of NTP patent claims invalid 7 after the discovery by RIM
6 Gene Quinn, “The Impact of the America Invents Act on the Definition of Prior Art,” IP Watchdog, October 3, 2012,
derived from: http://www.ipwatchdog.com/2012/10/03/the-impact-of-the-america-invents-act-on-the-definition-ofprior-art/id=28453/
7 Scott A. McKeown, “NTP’s Last Stand: The Remnants of the Patent Reexamination,” July 12, 2010, derived from:
http://www.patentspostgrant.com/lang/en/2010/07/new-ntp-patent-suit-relies-on-non-existent-claims
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CROWDSOURCING: The Killer App of the Patent Wars
investigators of a university research paper predating the NTP patents in a library
somewhere in Norway?
“ if only we had
Here’s another case of “if only we had known about the foreign prior art” — this time
known about the
foreign prior art
”
- Henry R. Nothhaft,
Silicon Valley entrepreneur
reported by Silicon Valley entrepreneur Henry R. Nothhaft in his 2011 bestselling
business book “Great Again” from Harvard Business Press:
“When I was CEO of Danger, a mobile Internet company that we later sold to
Microsoft for $500 million, investors refused to commit the $36 million we needed for our Series D round until we got an independent opinion from a top Silicon
Valley law firm that our patents really were valid and that none appeared to
infringe the intellectual property of competitors. That opinion cost us $100,000
and significant engineering resources, both of which could have been put to
use hiring more employees or intensifying our R&D efforts.
Even that was not enough to mitigate all our risk. One of Danger’s key patents
related to the swivel hinge of our iconic T-Mobile Sidekick cellphone. We
applied for that patent in 2000 right after the company was founded and
finally won approval from the USPTO nearly seven years later. During that time,
however, a very similar patent covering much the same sort of technology was
Besides creating new
kinds of prior art that
can shoot down a poor
quality patent, the AIA
issued to another company; this other patent was eventually acquired by Wireless Agents, a patent holding company, which then sued us for infringement.
Suffice it to say that the whole situation was a mess that ended up costing
the company $3 million in legal and settlement costs. The irony is that, in my
opinion, neither Danger nor the other company should have ever received their
patent reform law also
patents, because it later turned out that a major Japanese consumer electronics
provides a whole new
firm had filed for, and then abandoned, a patent on similar technology before
set of opportunities for
companies to use that
prior art to do so —
both before and after
a patent is issued.
either of us did. The patent office, however, lacked the sophisticated searching
tools and human resources needed to uncover the Japanese prior art.”
And More Ways to Use Prior Art
Besides creating new kinds of prior art that can shoot down a poor quality patent,
the AIA patent reform law also provides a whole new set of opportunities for companies to use that prior art to do so — both before and after a patent is issued.8
8 Derived from USPTO publications as well as unpublished documents from a bar review course on the America
Invents Act.
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CROWDSOURCING: The Killer App of the Patent Wars
Pre-Issuance Submission of Prior Art:
Any interested third party can now submit prior art that examiners can use to deny a
patent for a pending ap
plication before it is approved or within six months after it is published but still awaits
final review. Whenever possible, it is vital that invalidating prior art be found and
submitted before a patent of questionable quality is issued and used in litigation,
where it will be much more costly and difficult to defend against.
Post-Grant Review (PGR):
Post Grant Review offers interested parties the chance to submit invalidating prior
art within nine months after a patent is granted for any application with a filing
date after March 16, 2013. Any prior art submitted will have the benefit of being
interpreted more broadly than would be the case in a federal court infringement trial,
where patents are presumed to be valid.
Inter Partes Review (IPR):
Updating the old Inter Partes Reexamination procedure, a new Inter Partes Review
may be filed nine months after a patent is granted or after a PGR proceeding is
completed. In these hearings, only prior art based upon previous patents or printed
publications may be used to invalidate a patent.
Covered Business Method Patents (CBM):
In a major gain for business and financial professionals, a new Transitional Pro-
Prior art has now
become the killer app
of the patent wars!
gram for Covered Business Method Patents allows a company that has been sued
for infringing a financial or business method patent to use a PGR-like procedure to
challenge its validity. The petitioner in a CBM may only challenge the validity of
an invention’s claims regarding the practice, administration, or management of a
financial product or service, not the invention’s technological claims.
Put it all together — more prior art and more ways to use it —
and what have you got?
Prior art has now become the killer app of the patent wars!
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CROWDSOURCING: The Killer App of the Patent Wars
Whether you are facing an infringement suit or trying to strengthen your portfolio for
valuation and licensing purposes, prior art is the key link in the success or failure of
your effort.
So what is the best
way to find prior art?
Ask the public, of course!
But first you have to find it in a timely manner. And therein lies the challenge.
Crowdsourcing Gives Companies The Edge
Under the AIA, almost anything available to the public, anywhere in the world, can
become patent-killing (or patent-gold plating) prior art. So what is the best way to
find that prior art? Ask the public, of course!
Thanks to the ubiquity of global Internet communication, Article One Partners (AOP)
has mobilized a worldwide force of more than 25,000 researchers to uncover the
prior art that the patent office and professional prior art research firms so frequently
miss. Article One researchers compete for rewards up to $10,000 for submitting the
prior art most useful to the client.
The theory behind Article One’s business model is crowdsourcing, which holds that
with traditional centralized systems clogged with bureaucratic overhead or stressed
past the breaking point, better results can often be achieved by mobilizing the
decentralized “wisdom of the crowd” in fields as diverse as corporate R&D, venture
capital — and now prior art searching as well. Two notable successes include
Eli Lilly’s crowdsourced R&D initiative Innocentive, made up of 250,000 scientific researchers (60 percent of whom have Master’s degrees or higher), and the
crowdsourced venture capital funding site Kickstarter, which has raised more than
$350 million in venture funding from 2.5 million small investors for some 30,000
new ventures.
Crowdsourcing does not mean amateur hour. Just the opposite. Most Article One
researchers are highly-skilled technical, scientific, or patent professionals (see chart
below). Internal Article One statistics show that these elite professionals (from all
walks of life) make up its most active corps of researchers, who consistently deliver
high-value prior art results in a multitude of languages from more than 160 countries.
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CROWDSOURCING: The Killer App of the Patent Wars
Article One Community Overview
GEOGRAPHY
All Study Participants
The Article One
Community includes
more than 25,000
registered users
spanning over
160 countries.
INDUSTRY
All Researchers
Over 500
Researchers from
more than 30
EDUCATION
All Study Participants
countries have
won Studies.
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CROWDSOURCING: The Killer App of the Patent Wars
How valuable are the results?
A 2010 study conducted by Wesley Cohen, the Frederick C. Joerg Distinguished
“ We needed [to find]
Professor of Economics and Management at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business, found that in nearly 60 percent of its client projects, Article One researchers
prior art that was 10
uncovered prior art that offered new invalidity paths with which to challenge a
to 15 years old, and
patent that neither the clients, their law firms, nor the U.S. Patent Office had been
the best sources were
able to discover on their own.
people who were active
in our industry during
the 1990s. Article One
had those people in its
”
community.
Professor Cohen further estimated that for an average infringement suit with $100
million at-risk, the value added to a client using Article One Partners would be
$7.5 million.
This helps explain why Article One Partners, though still only a startup, has successfully worked with nearly 200 clients — more than 15 percent of whom are among
the top Global 500 firms.
- David Latner,
General Counsel, Blue Cat
The Article One Advantage
The secret of Article One’s success lies in the three special characteristics of its
research community, which in combination are impossible to find anywhere else.
Country-Specific Patent Expertise
First, many Article One researchers have deep country-specific patent expertise —
“ AOP’s study successfully
meaning, they are experts in the patents and prior art of their native country. One
particularly productive Article One researcher, for example, is a former patent examiner at SIPO, China’s national patent office. Fluent in Mandarin and English, and
uncovered new
with a Bachelor of Science from Beijing University and a Masters of Engineering
invalidating art that
from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, he is adept at finding high-quality prior art
traditional prior art
searches didn’t locate
- Stuart Dunwoody,
Partner at a Law Firm
that others easily overlook in a nation now issuing twice as many patents as the U.S.
”
And remember, Chinese prior art can kill a U.S. patent just as easily as U.S. prior art.
Deep Industry-Specific Knowledge
The second characteristic of many Article One researchers is their industry-specific
knowledge, also known as “subject matter” expertise. Many researchers have decades of experience in various scientific, technology, and engineering industries.
Thus it would not be surprising for Article One to launch a study for a client only to
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CROWDSOURCING: The Killer App of the Patent Wars
hear back from one of its researchers, “Hey, I wrote my thesis on that in graduate
school” or “We built that 15 years ago at my last employer.” It is this sort of expertise
“ Article One
that can mean the difference between patent victory and defeat for a client.
strengthened our legal
One case in point is networking provider BlueCat Networks, which was the target
positionby finding several
of a number of patent claims. Explained BlueCat general counsel David Latner: “We
references — including
needed [to find] prior art that was 10 to 15 years old, and the best sources were
people who were active in our industry during the 1990s. Article One had those
non-patent literature —
that had not been found
”
by prior search firms...
- Paul Alexander,
people in its community.”
Another case in point is offered by Stuart Dunwoody, a partner at a law firm representing online payday loan company Cashnet in a patent defense. “AOP’s study
successfully uncovered new invalidating art that traditional prior art searches didn’t
locate,” he noted. “They provided two separate paths to invalidity, including ob-
Senior Partner, Howrey LLP
scure publications about a product offered in 1997.”
Outstanding “Outside the Box” Research Ability
The third characteristic of the Article One research community is the prevalence of
people with outstanding “outside the box” research abilities. These researchers are
often cross-disciplinary, and can find hidden connections between seemingly-dispa-
“ I was surprised to get
rate industries — discovering, for example, that a patented non-abrasive cleaner
more relevant Japanese
prior art from Article
used in a laundry detergent also has a good deal of relevant prior art in the contact
lens industry. These people sometimes locate surprisingly useful prior art just when
the client has given up hope of finding any through traditional means.
One than I did from
“Article One strengthened our legal position by finding several references — includ-
the Japanese prior art
ing non-patent literature — that had not been found by prior search firms,” says Paul
search I ordered. Their
Alexander, a senior partner at Howrey LLP, a global law firm ranked at the top of
innovative way of
intellectual property law firms by the journal IP Law and Business. “Their approach
crowdsourcing simply
generates better results.
- Ruud Peters,
is unique, and I believe it leads to the discovery of prior art that is not found using
”
traditional methods and approaches.”
Or in the words of Ruud Peters, the Chief Intellectual Property Officer at the $40
billion Netherlands-based electronics giant Philips: “I was surprised to get more rele-
Chief Intellectual Property Officer
vant Japanese prior art from Article One than I did from the Japanese prior art search
Philips
I ordered. Their innovative way of crowdsourcing simply generates better results.”
It’s interesting to note that traditional prior art research firms are also participating
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CROWDSOURCING: The Killer App of the Patent Wars
“ Success” in prior art
searching is not simply
defined as finding the
and contributing to Article One studies, and it makes perfect sense for them to do
so. In many cases they employ exactly the kind of people who can be successful
on such a platform. So Article One has essentially become a one-stop shop for the
world’s top prior art researchers.
smoking gun piece of
prior art to invalidate a
patent. Patent quality
is the goal. Given that,
“ success” should really
be defined as either
Measuring Success
“Success” in prior art searching is not simply defined as finding the smoking gun
piece of prior art to invalidate a patent. Patent quality is the goal. Given that,
“success” should really be defined as either invalidating the patent or conversely
confirming that the patent is valid.
invalidating the
patent or conversely
confirming that the
patent is valid.
A prior art smoking gun can prove invalidity. But validity, on the other hand, can
never be 100 percent certain. Rather, confidence in validity depends upon the
exhaustiveness of the search. And Article One performs the world’s most exhaustive
search, as demonstrated in the “report card” example below.
Research Report Card
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CROWDSOURCING: The Killer App of the Patent Wars
From the Client’s Perspective
If there is little doubt that Article One researchers produce prior art search results of
unrivaled quality and utility, prospective clients have other reasons for engaging with
“ Article One has been
Article One. The four most common questions asked by companies (and their law
firms) are as follows:
successful in building
1) Can Article One help us build patent value as well as reduce
a comprehensive prior
patent threats?
art collection to help
strengthen our patents.
”
There’s no denying that the patent wars have made companies in every industry
nervous. Sometimes it seems as if a high-stakes patent infringement suit lurks
around every corner. But companies must also be proactive in building and
- Chief Patent Counsel,
strengthening their intellectual property portfolios for long-term value. And Article
Top 3 global automaker
One has helped a number of companies do just that.
Says the chief patent counsel of one of the world’s Top 3 global automakers:
“Article One has been successful in building a comprehensive prior art collection
to help strengthen our patents. They took the search beyond what traditional
prior art research is able to achieve — and in a much shorter period of time.
Their work strengthened our portfolio and allowed us to allocate resources much
better as we drive new innovation in the auto industry.”
2) What about confidentiality? We’re dealing with some very sensitive
legal issues here.
Neither the client sponsoring the research nor the results of that study are ever
publicly disclosed. The public does not know the basis upon which the research
is launched. It could be a party in litigation or another industry firm with a concern about a potential lawsuit. In sensitive research projects, the presentation to
the community can be a description of technology, without identifying specific
patent(s) so that the identity of the patent at issue and client sponsor can be
further protected.
Article One does not practice law nor interpret the prior art gathered by the
researchers, and neither do the researchers themselves. The results are provided
to the client under a contractual confidentiality agreement in which Article One’s
work constitutes protected work product and/or trial preparation material.
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CROWDSOURCING: The Killer App of the Patent Wars
3) Discoverability is another area of interest. Has Article One had to
produce any information in response to a discovery request?
Article One has structured its platform to provide evidence that speaks for itself.
The community is requested to provide the prior art with solely a description
of where in the prior art the technology description resides. The community is
directed specifically not to provide any interpretation of the evidence or subject
patents, and the platform does not enable any entry area. Earlier in the company’s history, when rewards were paid based on a decision of whether the
community found a new prior art path compared to traditional research, Article
One received a handful of subpoenas. All but one were withdrawn based on
correspondence with the counsel. In one case, Article One filed a motion to
quash, the motion was a success with J. Cedarbaum (S.D.N.Y. 2010) providing
in an unpublished opinion that the party had no right to receive any information
about the work product produced in a Study and that the patent owner’s efforts to
discover this information was “an act of desperation.” (A copy of the unpublished opinion is available upon request.)
Based on the quality level of Article One results, clients requested to pay the
community consistently. The Article One platform adjusted its payments to pay
every reward. This has been a benchmark in the crowdsourcing industry. Since
the change to guaranteed rewards in 2010, Article One has not received a
single subpoena.
4) We’ve already got four outside lawyers and a prior art search firm
working on billable hours. What’s it going to cost to add thousands
of Article One researchers to this mix?
The costs to client for Article One research are fixed. This means no more
billable hours for prior art research that goes beyond the English language
digitized searches generally offered by traditional prior art firms. Article One
researchers are a competitive lot and each brings his or her own expertise and
advantages to the equation, including access to content and databases (local
university libraries, online sources, and more). This creates an enormous corpus
of high-value prior art at no additional charge to the client. In addition, many
researchers provide their own translations of the prior art — also at no extra cost.
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CROWDSOURCING: The Killer App of the Patent Wars
5) Timing is everything. Doesn’t it make sense to do a quick traditional
prior art search first — and then come to Article One only if that
search fails?
By unleashing the
“ wisdom of the crowd,”
There are two problems with that approach. First, you may only find out that
your first prior art search was inadequate after your company is declared an
Article One Partners
infringer and ordered to pay who knows how many millions to the plaintiff.
is proud to be part of
And second, isn’t it better to find actionable prior art before the litigation train
the solution to creating
leaves the station — a train that’s all too often driven by the engine of billable
better patents that
hours — when it’s still relatively easy for both sides to reach a settlement? In the
end you can’t afford to be penny wise and pound-foolish when the stakes are
industry can rely upon.
so high.
That said, there are some situations, especially pre-litigation, where clients simply don’t require the exhaustiveness of a typical Article One crowdsourced prior
art search. For these situations, Article One offers a lower-priced ExpertSource
option that utilizes only the most experienced Article One researchers in a given
technology for a private, more limited and focused search objective.
Building a Better Patent System
Critics and supporters of the patent system all agree on one point: a better method
of locating prior art and determining which inventions truly merit a patent or not is
in the interests of business and the nation as a whole. By unleashing the “wisdom of
the crowd,” Article One Partners is proud to be part of the solution to creating better
patents that industry can rely upon.
Contact Information
FOr more information, contact
OUR New York headquarters at:
555 Madison Avenue, 30th Floor
New York, NY 10022
United States of America
888.737.0772
www.ArticleOnePartners.com
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