CA has announced that it has joined with other industry leaders to inaugurate a new system of peer review for software patents through the Community Patent Review project.
Selected by the US Patent & Trademark Office (USPTO) as one of its strategic initiatives to improve and streamline the patent application review process, the Community Patent Review project is a collaborative effort between USPTO and New York Law School's Institute for Information Law & Policy.
The project will deploy an online system to allow the scientific community to provide input into the patent examination process. This "open review" process is designed to provide the patent examiner with relevant information for assessing if an invention is patentable. The goal is to improve the quality of issued patents.
"CA has a long history of advancing technology research through partnerships with external organisations," said Professor Beth Noveck, director of the Institute for Information Law & Policy at New York Law School. "We are very pleased to have them on board."
As a lead sponsor and active participant in the project, CA has committed to consent to community peer review of some of its published patent applications by allowing third parties to submit commentary explaining the relevance of the prior art they provide to the patent office.
CA's participation follows its pledge from last year to provide open access to key innovations covered by 14 of its US patents - and counterparts of these patents issued in other countries - for individuals and groups working on open source software.
"CA applauds New York Law School and the USPTO for their vision of using the Internet to link experts in a more effective and streamlined patent examination process," said Sam Greenblatt, senior vice-president, Innovation at CA. "This could be among the most important patent reform initiatives undertaken in the last few decades, and we are excited to be involved in it."
Other sponsors and participants in the Community Patent Review project include GE, HP, IBM, Microsoft and Red Hat.
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CA (NYSE: CA), one of the world's largest information technology (IT) management software companies, unifies and simplifies the management of enterprise-wide IT. Founded in 1976, CA is headquartered in Islandia, New York, and serves customers in more than 140 countries. For more information, please visit http://ca.com.
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