Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Intellectual Property Law Blogs -> Two-Seventy-One Patent Blog

Intellectual Property Law

: Two-Seventy-One Patent Blog

Patent "Bounties" Attempting a Comeback

By Peter Zura

Borrowing from a page book of Peer-to-Patent and the long-defunct Bountyquest, the company Article One Partners, LLC has launched "a new global community to legitimize the validity of patents."

Basically, the system works to recruit community members (also known as "Advisors") to search and report prior art against high profile patents. Article One then analyzes the prior art to determine whether it can invalidate a specific patent. If Article One forms an opinion that patents are invalid, Advisors earn up to U.S. $50,000, with $1,000,000 total being offered for launch. Advisors who actively build the community also earn premium compensation in Article One's Profit Sharing Plan of about five percent (5%) of the company's net annual profit.

According to Article One, "the result is a highly-rewarded community providing a citizen's review of U.S. patents to justify monopoly pricing for true innovation and energize U.S. patent reform."

Read the press release here.

Visit Article One's website here.

Full post as published by Two-Seventy-One Patent Blog on November 17, 2008 (boomark / email).