As new technologies have entered the patent system over the past 25 years patent offices have faced greater challenges in identifying all relevant prior art (documentary evidence that an invention has previously been made) during the patent examination process. In part this is due to the lack of a history of issued patents in these new subject matter areas...

As new technologies have entered the patent system over the past 25 years patent offices have faced greater challenges in identifying all relevant prior art (documentary evidence that an invention has previously been made) during the patent examination process. In part this is due to the lack of a history of issued patents in these new subject matter areas; that is, patent examiners cannot simply refer to their database of issued patents to find the most relevant prior art because there are few if any issued patents in the new subject matter area. However, more often this prior art challenge stems from the fact that the patent examiners do not have access to “non-patent” prior art, prior art in the form of journal articles, whitepapers, documentation, or even software code, or that “non-patent” prior art has not been organized into searchable databases. Lacking the most relevant prior art, patent examiners have little choice but to grant such patents. The result is non-meritorious patents – patents that should never have issued or should not have issued with the breadth of claims expressed. Such overly broad or non-meritorious patents create a drag on innovation and cost industry and consumers hundreds of millions of dollars in patent litigation expense or unwarranted license fees.

Post-Issue seeks to address this challenge by providing a framework within which volunteer peer reviewers can work together to find prior art relevant to issued patents, evaluate that prior art, and make that prior art available to all. Post-Issue builds from the very successful Peer-to-Patent project and seeks to harness the same peer reviewers to this equally challenging task.

Post-Issue is a framework tool. Neither the Post-Issue team nor New York Law School take a stance on the merits of any patent posted on the site.

Those wishing to participate as peer reviewers can go directly to our current list of posted patents. If you have questions on how to use the site, please visit our How To page.

Those wishing to post a patent for review, please click on the Suggest a Patent button below.