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Company Reinvents BountyQuest In Attempt To Bust Bogus Patents
from the if-it-works... dept
Many of you probably remember BountyQuest, the company set up by Tim O'Reilly and Jeff Bezos as an attempt to bust bogus patents by reaching out to the "wisdom of the crowd" to dig up prior art. The initiative got plenty of attention, thanks to Bezos' and O'Reilly's involvement, but the project faded out and eventually just shut down after it failed in its high profile attempt to invalidate Bezos' own infamous "one-click patent" (which has since run into troubles on prior art found by others).
Apparently, though, there's a new startup that's attempting to do pretty much the same thing. The Associated Press has an article about Article One Partners, whose business plan sounds like a photocopy of BountyQuest's original plan. Apparently the AP reporters weren't aware of BountyQuest, because it's not mentioned in the article. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but considering the striking similarities between the two operations, you'd think it would at least merit a mention. Hopefully Article One can survive where BountyQuest flopped, but I'm not that hopeful, honestly. It could potentially work for a few high profile patents, but on average, it's tough to get random people to get excited about digging up prior art on patents.
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ironic monthly
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The value of the historical record
I'm actually more baffled by the fact that the memory of BountyQuest effort seems to have been lost so rapidly. I suppose in the internet age, historical cycles are much shorter than us "old folks" are accustomed to.
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Are we sure this is a good thing?
I don't know which it is, but I'd say let's not be too hasty at celebrating the appearance of this new organization. They might not be anything we want to see.
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It's about patent validity
And as for BountyQuest, I saw one article mentioned the founder used to be part of the earlier company, so that covers reaching out to them.
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stop the shilling!!!
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another horseshit from Mikey
or "the hive mind of slashbot"...
or "the combined intelligence of techdirt lemming-punks"
I woudn't trust you guys to clean my toilets, much less to dig up prior art on patents...
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