December 15, 2009
An Australian version of the Peer-to-Patent initiative was recently launched in conjunction with IP Australia (official site). From the official announcement:
Peer-to-Patent Australia opens part of the patent examination process and invites the public to review patent applications volunteered for the trial… The process is designed to tap into the expertise of the public to help assess whether a particular application is eligible for a patent.
The system is currently being run as a 12 month pilot programme, limited to business method patent applications.
The original Peer-to-Patent initiative completed a 2 year US pilot in June 2009. While the US Patent Office has yet to report on its results, the first year report from the New York Law School was positive (some criticisms are listed at Wikipedia). The US pilot was not limited to business method patents, although interestingly the patent application which received the most user interaction was such a patent – “Method, apparatus and computer program product for providing status of a process” (hmm, maybe they could also give it a unique name like ps or top?).
It is a good idea for the Australian pilot to be limited to business method patents, which covers most manifestations of software patents. It appears that IP Australia is giving good support to it. Let’s hope that IPONZ watches this closely – IPONZ (like the MED) has good IT systems and has been quite progressive with IT. If the pilot works, it will be a major improvement to a currently in-need-of-improvement system.
Of course, as with any community-driven system, its quality will only be as good as the community supports it. For open source, could it be a case of “many eyes make bad software patent applications unsuccessful”?
October 29, 2009
The Government recently called for freer access to state data. This was promptly followed up by the release of the draft NZ Government Open Access and Licensing (NZGOAL) framework. It endorsed the view of the NZ Council for Humanities:
“Now more than ever is there a very present need to bring information the Government holds on behalf of its people into the public domain so that it may be used in ways that stimulate innovation, generate cultural creativity, social interaction and dialogue, while also kick starting economic growth.”
Amen. Last month Tim O’Reilly put the question succinctly: “can government become a platform?… the real secret of success in Government 2.0 is thinking about government as a platform.”
He elaborates:
“Rather than licensing government data to a few select ‘value added’ providers, who then license the data downstream, the federal government (and many state and local governments) are beginning to provide an open platform that enables anyone with a good idea to build innovative services that connect government to citizens, give citizens visibility into the actions of government and even allow citizens to participate directly in policy-making.”
The legal profession should be at the forefront of this process, but it has a history of lagging in such matters – even in the United States, as reported here following September’s Gov 2.0 Summit in Washington DC:
“Unfortunately, the legal profession was missing from the proceedings, convicted in absentia for being part of the problem instead of part of the solution.”
Let’s hope that as this process moves forward, through Government programmes and the efforts of those such as Open New Zealand, the legal profession and justice system is a full participant, and able to be part of the solution.
described the “Facebook generation” as having “a culture where the rapid and often uninhibited exchange of information is the norm… The younger staff generation of MoD staff are not inculcated with the same culture of protecting information as their counterparts from previous generations”
September 8, 2009
As my last post was on the subject of company records, I should mention that the NZ Companies Office is far and away the best company registry website around. The main search pages may be getting slightly dated now, but are still great and gradually being updated, with a major overhaul apparently planned (IIRC from the “roadshow” they did last year).
One very simple thing at the top of my wishlist: ditch the pop-up results frames! Allow us to open results in new tabs (without post-backs)! As you can see I don’t ask much. Also the “watchlist” notification function which I understand is planned will be VERY useful. And while I’m making a list, a historical shareholders function would be useful, albeit of limited use because (unlike changing directors) not every shareholding change is required to be filed.
Best of all (from a tech-perspective) it allows XML web service integration for free, which is brilliant (I have used it, and still do, on several projects, even gratis developer tech support is provided [if you ask nicely]) albeit with the requirement that a confidentiality agreement is signed regarding the XML schema. I don’t quite see why that is necessary (not that I’m at liberty to discuss it…) but perhaps the Open New Zealand initiative will take up the matter. They have also been very active with new media (e.g. on Facebook and Twitter) which is great to see and a model for other agencies.
By contrast, the UK, Australian, and Hong Kong equivalents are terrible (in ascending order of awfulness). The information is there, you just need to pay for it and/or go via a third party. In 2007 I tried talking to a Hong Kong official about automated web-service access to the Hong Kong register… well, the fact their homepage still refers to IE5.0 and Netscape 6.0 gives an idea of the responses I got.
Kudos to the NZ Companies Office, which should be a model for other public sector registers.
