Prior Art Share

One concept we’re wrestling with during the early development of the Prior Art Database is how best to help users find and label information. Tagging individual entries is useful to a degree, but tags (for good reason) are very general labels. Patent researchers, attorneys, innovators, and the general public are all going to want to search for very specific information.

Tags will be useful to describe generally what an innovation is. But we’ll need a more specific method for labeling and searching for what the innovation does. A way for users to define the constituent parts of a technology in a very focused search.

What’s the best way to do this? There is no universally accepted taxonomy that organizes software, often because the functionality of an individual piece of software crosses categories. It may be helpful to have a classification system that is separate from tagging. When you search a library catalog, you can search by title, subject, author, or a keyword that appears in the text. Tags, perhaps, could function as a “subject” search, with the individual functions of innovations being identified as keywords.

An example: Let’s say a user is creating an entry to describe a program that generates random environments graphics within a video game. Tags for such an entry could consist of “randomization,” “graphics,” or “games.” These general categories would be useful to someone browsing for what’s generally out there in this area. But it will also be important for a user to come to our database and identify specific constituent parts of technology such as “polygon triangulation algorithm,” or something even more specific such as “Chazelle’s algorithm” or “Seidel’s algorithm.”

Essentially, we want to differentiate between function, which will be described by tags, and constituent parts, which will need its own system. We already have in tagging a useful tool to identify broadly what a technology is, such as “transportation.” What we could use some help with is a system of cataloging the specifics, such as “spark plug, tire, and fuel injector.” Your thoughts and comments are very welcome.

We are getting very close to having a functional interface for the Prior Art Database. Features in development this week include discussion threads for each reference. This will be an important tool for helping us understand how to better organize information for users, as well as provide an opportunity for contributors to critique the quality or content of an entry. We’re hoping that these spaces can be a way for users to engage one another — perhaps even find others who are interested in the same kinds of information or innovations — and help to build up a community.

Also in the works are improvemets to the visual layout, and experimentation with autocompletion styles. Since many, many users will be contributing information and tagging entries, it’s important to have a tool that suggests tags to keep the tag cloud from dissolving into a million different words for the same idea. This tool will be especially important as we can already see that some creative ideas will be needed in our search for the best way to help users clump useful entries with tags as well as pinpoint very specific entries in the database.

It’s still too soon to begin discussion of beta testing and the volunteers we’ll need for that, but it is very exciting to see that we are on our way.

The Prior Art Project has set a goal of a working Alpha by the end of Q1, and our programmers are hard at work. As a sneak preview, we have some screen shots of what we’ve been working on. This is a simple walkthrough of some of the planned features of editing and linking entries. We’ve been planning this with the idea of serving users who may or many not have a heavy technical background, as people from all kinds of fields will become contributors, as with any wiki-type database.

Here is an example of what an individual entry in the Prior Art database might look like. This one is a reference for the computer mouse:

The layout of individual entries is designed to help users find what they’re looking for as quickly as possible. Perhaps a search doesn’t yield exactly what you’re looking for right away; tags on what you do find can help you examine related material. But let’s say the entry you find needs a little correction. You can edit entries in the Prior Art database without leaving the page:

If you’d like to link the entry to a related patent, click “Add Urls” and “Choose Patent Url.” This brings up a widget which uses the Google Ajax Search Patent APIs. The user can click “copy” and the patent is linked.

Of course, it’s also important to be able to link to external sites:

And here’s what the updated entry would look like, with these two new links added:

The alpha is on its way, and we’ll be updating soon with information about how to get involved in testing, contributing, and spreading the word!

Prior Art Share emerged in 2008 as an open collaborative effort to document technological innovations in a setting that invites the participation and cooperation of the public. With the ever-accelerating pace of technology, it is critical to provide a resource for documenting, finding, and building upon non-patented prior art. In the past, innovations were easier to identify, date, and assign to a specific creator. As the world of software and electronics blossom, technologies evolve daily making it increasingly difficult to identify prior art. Patent systems have fallen prey to the abusive practices of illegitimate patent seekers who are able to gain control over technology that they did not create, with great detriment to those attempting to bring new ideas into the world.

This project is spearheaded by individuals at Mozilla, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Yahoo, and the Internet Archive. We are supported by volunteer contributors who come from diverse industries and backgrounds. But we all share in common a passion for transparency and innovation, as well as a desire to prevent the stifling of creativity and fair use of ideas. We are working together to create a massive database of information that inventors and the public may use to record and reference the unprecedented period of human creativity we are currently living in.

We believe that in order to sustain the breathtaking acceleration of technology that humanity has achieved, an open, public effort to protect a creative environment is required. This need is so fundamental that it transcends the goals and desires of any one person or organization. Our goal is to preserve inventors’ intellectual property rights, to help defend against invalid patents, and to work with other initiatives to promote a healthy creative environment in the fast-paced technological era.