Google joins the Patent Prior Arts Initiative

Prior Art Archive, which is an initiative started by Massachusetts Institute of Technology, tech-giant Cisco along with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) to help the office take on the low-quality patents which should not have been registered in the first place, has gained a new ally in the form of Google. Supporting the initiative, Google’s Patent department stated that “applications should have to submit detailed disclosures when describing their inventions.” 

Google also underlined that any attempt to register an existing technology should be curbed by a thorough examination and searches by the examiners. They also pointed out that because of the lack of non-patent literature and tech documents such as manuals, technical specifications, or product marketing materials, many a time an already covered technology receives an unduly invention.

Takeaways 

1. Lack of information on the technology, contained in patent and non-patent literature, has led to the registration of duplicate patents. Prior Art Archive hopes to solve this problem by making information readily available and easily searchable.
    
2. Google’s support is major as they have earlier been involved in developing a patent archive called Google Patents which makes the relevant material easier to find.
    
3. Google’s intention towards a liberal patent regime is clear from its backing of this initiative apart from many others. Recently, it launched TD Commons which is a website where companies are able to publish, free of charge, the technical information they don’t want to patent.