How One Community Member Earned Thousands for Patent Research
Posted on Tue, Jul 13, 2010
The Article One team is proud to congratulate one of our Researchers, known as "Specialist", on winning our Study related to a social networking patent.
Specialist submitted evidence (known as "prior art") that can show the patent, owned by WhoGlue, to be invalid.
Specialist is a great role model for those who may not have much experience in a patent's area, but want to dive in:
“Most of the Patent Studies I’ve worked on, I had little to no direct experience with," says Specialist, "I think just generally being able to understand the text of potential prior art and how it relates to the questioned patent was most important.”
How She Searched
Specialist hails from the San Francisco Bay area where she is a Ph.D. candidate in a Bioengineering Program. She also has a B.S. in Electrical Engineering. Specialist says that she is used to searching for papers because she is in graduate school.
Article One, however, was her introduction to patents. When choosing which Studies to participate in, Specialist looks for subject matter that she has experience with, or something that is general enough to allow her to be reasonably successful.
Google Patents and Google Scholar are Specialist’s preferred research tools, and she notes that the Wayback Machine has come in handy a few times. Specialist likes being able to work on patent searches on her own schedule and enjoys that she can do the research simply using her laptop.
When conducting research for an AOP Study, Specialist’s strategy has been mainly to determine good keywords for searching. At times, she has had to use very different keywords to find the patents than are available in the questioned patent.
Aside from the Social Network Study, Specialist was also very involved in the Studies on the patents of "Method for Starting and Stopping an Engine" and "Automobile with a Stop/Start System". She notes that she had to use some interesting search terms in order to find good prior art for those Studies.
Her Advice to Current and Future Researchers
To current Article One Researchers, Specialist recommends being very organized. “Keep copies of every potential prior art. Sometimes it is helpful to look for art that is not ‘prior’ and check those references.”
Specialist also notes that she was pleasantly surprised to share in the Article One 2009 profit sharing bonus despite only having participated with Article One for a few months prior to distribution. Regarding the profit sharing program, in which the most active AOP researchers share about 5% of the company’s net profit, Specialist says, “I think it gives some incentive for those who do a lot of research, but haven’t won a Study.”
To future Article One Researchers out there, Specialist says, “Go for it. I think a lot people have enough lay knowledge to be able to participate in some type of Study. You don’t need any specialized equipment; just the internet, some time, and a little imagination. You may not get the top prize, but you’re bound to get something out of it.”
Through her research with Article One, Specialist says, “I’ve learned a great deal about patents and the need for patent reform. It is also pretty cool to know that I could be contributing to some big decisions being made.”
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