Share Your Knowledge and Earn $50K
Patents are supposed to cover new inventions. But how do you know if they are something new? Ideally, you search what is called the prior art or all the world’s publicly available knowledge on the topic. But how do you do that in a timely and consistent way?
One approach, used by the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is to hire and train a small army of patent examiners and give them the best search tools and content money can buy.
Another approach is to crowdsource it. If prior art exist someone out there already knows about it so the trick is to get them to share this knowledge with the patent examiner. There are a couple of groups trying to take this approach. The most recent is Article One Partners. They offer $50K to contributors (called advisors) that are first to provide prior art that invalidates a patent study. Each patent study includes one or more patents or patent applications. Further you can earn points in various ways (including providing feedback on the beta site) that qualifies you for profit sharing.
