From b3eck at aim.com Sun Oct 15 22:02:17 2006 From: b3eck at aim.com (Brandon Beck) Date: Wed Apr 18 12:55:43 2007 Subject: [p2patent-developer] Collaborative Quality Assurance Message-ID: <45331259.6070206@aim.com> Two models have emerged for collaborative quality assurance, namely, Wikipedia and Google. One is based on recruiting content maintainers who ensure submission quality, and the other is based on developing ratings algorithms which ensure presentation quality. Since the Patent Office utilizes the former model, which has proved less-than-ideal in well-known Wikipedia disputes involving conflicts of interest, perhaps the best long-term alternative would be to invest in developing a system that determines the appropriate prior art as a byproduct of user interactions on the site. In either case, rewarding users for submitting appropriate prior art is critical to the success of Peer to Patent. From erichestenes at vikiwi.com Fri Oct 20 01:31:28 2006 From: erichestenes at vikiwi.com (Eric Hestenes) Date: Wed Apr 18 12:55:43 2007 Subject: [p2patent-developer] Welcome to the Peer to Patent Developer Mailing List Message-ID: <20061020083128.12986.qmail@web51411.mail.yahoo.com> Hi everyone, = = We finally have critical mass on the developer list and can get started w= ith a discussion of the software design. I=92d like to thank everyone who j= oined the Peer to Patent Developer mailing list and issue an open invitatio= n to include anyone else that would like to join. = = This will be a technically focused discussion list. Members of the list s= hould feel free at any time to post questions to the list about any of the = use cases or technical documents. We want to clarify the use cases and the = technical design and need help to flush out the details. To this end, there= is a now developer wiki which will allow editing the current proposals to = add information. = = If guidelines for postings are needed, a suggestion is to review the Apac= he Guidelines: http://jakarta.apache.org/site/mail.html = The immediate agenda for technical effort is to solidify a technical prop= osal for the Peer to Patent system. I would like to ask that we stay focuse= d on this discussion initially so that we can make some key decisions that = are holding up development. Any help you can provide on this is appreciated= . = = This is an open source project. Over time we hope to enroll some develope= rs from the community to the project as well. Anyone who wants to participa= te in the upcoming coding effort should contact me directly. It should be = an exciting effort with a real impact to the community. = The next message will be posted to the list shortly. = Thanks! = Eric Hestenes Technical Lead eric.hestenes@communitypatent.org = Project Documents link: http://www.communitypatent.org/project_docs/ = -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.linux-foundation.org/pipermail/p2patent-developer/attachm= ents/20061020/b121fba9/attachment.htm From erichestenes at vikiwi.com Fri Oct 20 01:51:33 2006 From: erichestenes at vikiwi.com (Eric Hestenes) Date: Wed Apr 18 12:55:43 2007 Subject: [p2patent-developer] Questions about Use Case 2 Setup new patent application Message-ID: <20061020085133.77637.qmail@web51407.mail.yahoo.com> A good place to start the Peer to Patent system architecture discussion is = with use case number two. Some of the other use cases are very complicated = and we should work out how documents are stored early on before we tackle o= ther issues like prior art. = = We need to determine how to store patent applications and associated meta= data (such as comments, ratings, and prior art) in our system, so that we c= an engage in community activities. Use case 2 (UC2) describes our current a= ssumptions about how patent applications should be setup in the system. = = Please review the background page link below before responding to the que= stions. = = http://tools.dotank.nyls.edu/wiki/index.php/Peer_2_Patent/developer/use_c= ases_discussion/uc2_setup = or try http://tinyurl.com/y4opcu = This is a request for your feedback on the following questions for relate= d to Use Case #2: = Questions: = (1) Can we avoid storing the document as XML in a datastore and instead = work exclusively with the USPTO patent application identifier? One could a= rgue that all we really need to store is metadata along with the user ident= ity and the patent application identifier. Is XML necessary? Is it overkil= l? = (2) Are there any standard XML formats that we can take advantage of tha= t will support all these requirements? The NLM DTD has been mentioned as a = possibility. What formats should be considered? = (3) Is there any existing open source content management system that is = well suited for the listed requirements? This option might be acceptable i= f we could do some customization. There are plenty of CMS tools that are n= ot suitable; which solutions might actually work? = = (4) Are there other standards that should investigated related to the da= ta format for the storage of the patent application or metadata? = = Responses should go to the mailing list. Please feel free to put architec= tural proposals or suggestions and background information directly into the= Wiki page. (Please change section D only!). = Thanks! = Eric Hestenes Technical Lead eric.hestenes@communitypatent.org = Project Documents link: http://www.communitypatent.org/project_docs/ = -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.linux-foundation.org/pipermail/p2patent-developer/attachm= ents/20061020/401fd4fc/attachment.htm From josh at chapterthreellc.com Fri Oct 20 09:42:41 2006 From: josh at chapterthreellc.com (Josh Koenig) Date: Wed Apr 18 12:55:43 2007 Subject: [p2patent-developer] Questions about Use Case 2 Setup new patent application In-Reply-To: <20061020085133.77637.qmail@web51407.mail.yahoo.com> References: <20061020085133.77637.qmail@web51407.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: First of all, thanks for kicking this off, Eric. The documentation you've produced already is fantastic in its granularity and comprehensiveness, and it should produce a great application. I'm excited to be involved in these discussions. And now to the questions at hand... > Is XML necessary? Is it overkill? I would say XML is probably overkill here, or at least premature. Creating a data structure that can be imported/exported as XML is an absolute necessity, but implementing the tool around an XML datastore would be much more slow and onerous than just using a plain-ol' SQL database. It seems to me that what we need is a solid specification which can be turned into SQL and then fronted to users as HTML through a content-management system, and also "fed out" as whatever XML format (if any) emerges as a standard in the Academic community. Ditto for importing content as standards emerge. Basically, my core feeling is that building applications around XML- based data storage is not the way to go. XML formats make fantastic glue to connect disparate systems, but the utility and ubiquity of SQL for a web-application's local datastore is undeniable. > Is there any existing open source content management system that is > well suited for the listed requirements? I'm completely confidant that Drupal can swing this application. It's really a database application framework with content-management and a user/access system built in. There's a very flexible and mature system for taxonomy and data-type specifications, as well as good tools for controlling workflows, adding ratings and comments, and the sorts of social-networking functions we want to see. I have a bias here as Drupal is my expertise, but it's a growing community of 1000s of active developers and 100s of 1000s of sites, and it's a great way to rapidly prototype, refine and launch community web applications. It's built on LAMP so the skills to mod are widely held and the TCO is low, and even though it doesn't look like a million dollars out of the box, a skilled theme-maker can give it a keen glossy shine. Plus the upcoming version 5.0 includes all sorts of AJAX goodies and tools for building cutting-edge "Web 2.0" user interfaces. http://www.drupal.org Anyway, as I said I have a bias, but I don't think it's an unfounded or ill advised one. I'd be happy to answer any questions folks might have. > (4) Are there other standards that should investigated related to > the data format for the storage of the patent application or metadata? Again, I think the important thing here is to get the data specification right and implement that through a good SQL database structure. In terms of what data to store, it seems to make sense to look at work that's going on in the scientific community, but from what I can see there's no clear standard. But that's not a big problem. In the open world, formats are fungible; I think for this work functionality comes first. Ok! Looking forward to what's next! cheers -josh Josh Koenig, Partner josh@chapterthreellc.com 1-888-822-4273 From public at misuse.org Sat Oct 28 15:08:34 2006 From: public at misuse.org (Steve Midgley) Date: Wed Apr 18 12:55:43 2007 Subject: [p2patent-developer] Digg / Slashdot as P2P platform? Message-ID: <200610282208.k9SM8fPn002125@smtp.osdl.org> Hi, I've been thinking about the platform decisions for P2P a little and am wondering why this system doesn't just run on top of an existing tool that does basically the same thing? Digg and Slashdot are essentially P2P-like in their functionality. Slashdot's code is open source and available (though ugly). Possibly Digg could be convinced to licensed use for this specific project (esp. b/c Omidyar supports P2P and Digg).. Here's my rationale (I'll use Digg because I think it's a slightly closer fit - Slashdot is roughly equiv..) In Digg, contributors post articles w/links and classify them within topics. Readers can subscribe (RSS) to articles according to topics. Within a topic, users can post comments & links. The value of the comments themselves are also rated by other users using a simple interface. Users themselves can be tracked by the value of their overall contributions. Comments can be "masked" to only allow the most highly rates comments to be seen - they can also be sorted by their rating.. In the P2P world, contributors would be patent holders who publish their work for community review. Readers would be domain experts who self assign to topics and get notified when new patents are posted. Comments would be expert review and discussion. Experts can rate other comments. I don't know the whole problem domain in P2P but I'm wondering why we couldn't start by using a very robust existing system and perhaps make smaller adaptions to fit our needs - rather than building something from scratch? Any input? Best, Steve From erichestenes at vikiwi.com Sun Oct 29 20:56:15 2006 From: erichestenes at vikiwi.com (Eric Hestenes) Date: Wed Apr 18 12:55:43 2007 Subject: [p2patent-developer] Digg / Slashdot as P2P platform? In-Reply-To: <200610282208.k9SM8fPn002125@smtp.osdl.org> Message-ID: <20061030045615.22949.qmail@web51405.mail.yahoo.com> Hi Steve, Thanks for the post and interesting suggestions. Tools like slashcode and= digg definitely are strong with respect to getting community feedback on l= inked articles and such. So, for example, if you posted the text of a paten= t application as an article, one can imagine using these tools for communit= y comments and ratings on those making the comments. = = My initial questions about this approach are: = * How would prior art references be handled? Is it treated like an articl= e? How is it stored? = One of the big features of the Peer to patent system will be the ability = to submit prior art references. (see Use Cases 7 and 13). In many instances= these references could be citations to journal articles, or other formats = including URLs or patent numbers. So for example, it could include a title,= volume number, year of publication, page numbers, and optional commentary = by the person who created the citation. Unlike a news article or URL, there= may be no interesting text to read with the citation. Over time, one can i= magine accumulating quite a large database of prior art references, which t= ypically consists of pointers to data that is stored somewhere else. = = So one question with the model of slashcode or digg, is whether these pri= or art reference metadata would have to be stored in an operational data st= ore (database), or are stored using some other approach. It would seem real= ly hard to avoid using a data store for this information. A community rank= ed list of the prior art will be forwarded to the patent examiner, so the c= ommunity input system has to be able to cope with this kind of data. = = It would be interesting to hear if anyone in the developer community has = ideas or thoughts on this subject. = = Thanks Eric Hestenes Technical Lead eric.hestenes@communitypatent.org = =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D= =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D = Use Case: http://www.communitypatent.org/use_cases/use_case_7_submit_prior_art/inde= x.html = Current Thinking: http://tinyurl.com/ybqhst or http://tools.dotank.nyls.edu/wiki/index.php?title=3DPeer_2_Patent/develop= er/use_cases_discussion/uc7_submit_prior_art = = = Steve Midgley wrote: Hi, I've been thinking about the platform decisions for P2P a little and am = wondering why this system doesn't just run on top of an existing tool = that does basically the same thing? Digg and Slashdot are essentially = P2P-like in their functionality. Slashdot's code is open source and = available (though ugly). Possibly Digg could be convinced to licensed = use for this specific project (esp. b/c Omidyar supports P2P and = Digg).. Here's my rationale (I'll use Digg because I think it's a slightly = closer fit - Slashdot is roughly equiv..) In Digg, contributors post = articles w/links and classify them within topics. Readers can subscribe = (RSS) to articles according to topics. Within a topic, users can post = comments & links. The value of the comments themselves are also rated = by other users using a simple interface. Users themselves can be = tracked by the value of their overall contributions. Comments can be = "masked" to only allow the most highly rates comments to be seen - they = can also be sorted by their rating.. In the P2P world, contributors would be patent holders who publish = their work for community review. Readers would be domain experts who = self assign to topics and get notified when new patents are posted. = Comments would be expert review and discussion. Experts can rate other = comments. I don't know the whole problem domain in P2P but I'm wondering why we = couldn't start by using a very robust existing system and perhaps make = smaller adaptions to fit our needs - rather than building something = from scratch? Any input? Best, Steve _______________________________________________ p2patent-developer mailing list p2patent-developer@lists.osdl.org https://lists.osdl.org/mailman/listinfo/p2patent-developer -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.linux-foundation.org/pipermail/p2patent-developer/attachm= ents/20061029/ac0855ef/attachment.htm From nick at cambia.org Sun Oct 29 22:12:21 2006 From: nick at cambia.org (Nick dos Remedios) Date: Wed Apr 18 12:55:43 2007 Subject: [p2patent-developer] Digg / Slashdot as P2P platform? In-Reply-To: <20061030045615.22949.qmail@web51405.mail.yahoo.com> References: <20061030045615.22949.qmail@web51405.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On 30/10/2006, at 3:56 PM, Eric Hestenes wrote: > It would be interesting to hear if anyone in the developer > community has ideas or thoughts on this subject. One idea I have, is for sites such as patent database providers (I work at CAMBIA, which provides a free full text patent search - http://www.patentlens.net/) to collect comments and peer reviews of patents and then share/publish these "comments" with any other interested parties (other patent informatics sites, etc) via a centrally administered web services server (OSDL?). So, instead of relying on a single site to be the point of contact for submission of patent reviews and prior art, etc, many sites, with different user foci, could contribute to the effort. Bloggers could incorporate the web service just as easily as patent database providers. For this to work, the web services schema would have to be flexible enough to allow comments from a range of user perspectives (software patents, life science patents, engineering patents, etc), while still enforcing a degree of strictness necessary for proper prior art documentation. We have ideas about also gathering information that falls outside the specs of the P2P project, such as users sharing information on licensing of particular patents as well as general comments about the technical issues relating to the practice a given patented invention. It has the drawback adding complexity and thus slowing the process. If too many players try to influence the schema/functionality then it could degrade into a lowest common denominator spec that is impractical to actually implement. It would be up to each site as to how to collect and display this data. However I would expect there to be a collaboratively developed prototype web client that could be used as a starting point as well as providing a way for bug fixes to be shared. This would not be limited to patent database sites as it is now fairly easy to access the EPO OPS web service (http:// ops.espacenet.com/) to GET patent data for a given patent number (their DocDB database has all jurisdictions: front page data, family data and legal status) using a SOAP client. The above mentioned web service could even provide this data itself! Another idea is for the comment collection and publishing to come from a single source but for other sites to be able to provide access to this service via a simple iframe. The iframe would display existing comments for that patent (by passing a patent doc ID) and would also allow the user to add comments to that patent. There may be technical problems with this idea due to authentication, etc. and its really only an idea off the top of my head right now. Anyway, thats my Monday morning babble... I hope it makes sense. Nick ---- Nick dos Remedios, PhD CAMBIA -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.linux-foundation.org/pipermail/p2patent-developer/attachments/20061030/f5a85a3b/attachment.htm From zack at chapterthreellc.com Mon Oct 30 09:19:37 2006 From: zack at chapterthreellc.com (Zack Rosen) Date: Wed Apr 18 12:55:43 2007 Subject: [p2patent-developer] Digg / Slashdot as P2P platform? In-Reply-To: <200610282208.k9SM8fPn002125@smtp.osdl.org> References: <200610282208.k9SM8fPn002125@smtp.osdl.org> Message-ID: <008AE47B-9E47-4DE7-8936-C28FEC7EF567@chapterthreellc.com> "I don't know the whole problem domain in P2P but I'm wondering why we couldn't start by using a very robust existing system and perhaps make smaller adaptions to fit our needs - rather than building something from scratch?" Absolutely! I see no reason to build a custom CMS (content management system) for this project. This would greatly increase up-front development costs and would be an unnecessary yoke on the project as we would be responsible for developing all site features alone. And it would be completely unnecessary, we would gain no additional flexibility by doing this, only forfeit functionality and support. I also agree with you that the Digg.com website has many of the features that we would like to see in the P2P project, and I think we have a lot to learn from them in terms of how to build a highly usable and fun community experience. They've put an awful lot of thought into their interface and design and it shows. That said, I am pessimistic about trying to use their code base directly for this project. Even if we could obtain it, unless it almost exactly met our needs out-of-box now and into the future it wouldn't make sense to use for these reasons: Functionality: From a design and usability perspective Digg.com is stellar. From a technology perspective Digg.com is not very interesting. Open source platforms such as Drupal can recreate 90% or more of the functionality currently seen on Digg.com out-of-box, and offer much more beyond that. While digg.com is afforded the features that are developed by the ~6 or so full time employees of the companies, communities like Drupal benefit from the literally hundreds of community code contributors. Flexibility: Building your site on technology provided by a partner which considers providing that technology as a secondary business is overly risky. - Support: For a startup like Digg, getting bogged down supporting a non-paying partner will be very tough to deal with. Digg will have limited resources and will naturally have to prioritize what they concentrate on. When push comes to shove primary business will come first and secondary will be supported as time permits. - Contingency: The risk of Digg as a company going out of business and taking their back-end technology with them are far greater than that of an established technology vendor or open-source product. - Technology: The Digg back end technology was developed primarily to meet the business needs of Digg, it was not developed as a reusable platform. This will drive up costs for you for customization and feature development compared to platform technologies built to be used by others. TCO: A maxim of IT managers everywhere is 'the cost is not what you pay for up front it's what you pay over time'. The pace of technology evolution and the adaptive requirements of technology owners usually generates greater 'hidden' costs than the price tag purchasers are quoted upfront. In all likely hood the cost of acquiring and setting up the Digg.com codebase would be far out- weighed by additional costs in building out the P2P web site over time. This means that the real technology investment question is not "what gets us from A to B cheapest and easiest" but "how much is this going to cost for the life-cycle of the project?". I am sure that the costs incurred by the inflexibility of the Digg.com code-base over time will be far greater than the costs to implement the P2P on a reusable open-source platform like Drupal. -Zack On Oct 28, 2006, at 3:08 PM, Steve Midgley wrote: > I've been thinking about the platform decisions for P2P a little > and am > wondering why this system doesn't just run on top of an existing tool > that does basically the same thing? Digg and Slashdot are essentially > P2P-like in their functionality. Slashdot's code is open source and > available (though ugly). Possibly Digg could be convinced to licensed > use for this specific project (esp. b/c Omidyar supports P2P and > Digg).. > > Here's my rationale (I'll use Digg because I think it's a slightly > closer fit - Slashdot is roughly equiv..) In Digg, contributors post > articles w/links and classify them within topics. Readers can > subscribe > (RSS) to articles according to topics. Within a topic, users can post > comments & links. The value of the comments themselves are also rated > by other users using a simple interface. Users themselves can be > tracked by the value of their overall contributions. Comments can be > "masked" to only allow the most highly rates comments to be seen - > they > can also be sorted by their rating.. > > In the P2P world, contributors would be patent holders who publish > their work for community review. Readers would be domain experts who > self assign to topics and get notified when new patents are posted. > Comments would be expert review and discussion. Experts can rate other > comments. > > I don't know the whole problem domain in P2P but I'm wondering why we > couldn't start by using a very robust existing system and perhaps make > smaller adaptions to fit our needs - rather than building something > from scratch? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.linux-foundation.org/pipermail/p2patent-developer/attachments/20061030/7ca54a6c/attachment.htm From erichestenes at vikiwi.com Mon Oct 30 09:36:33 2006 From: erichestenes at vikiwi.com (Eric Hestenes) Date: Wed Apr 18 12:55:43 2007 Subject: [p2patent-developer] specification updates Message-ID: <20061030173633.75732.qmail@web51407.mail.yahoo.com> Hi everyone, = We have had quite a few new members join the Peer to Patent developer mai= ling list in the last two weeks. For those new to this list, here is a rec= ap of our goals. We are looking for your input and suggestions on our techn= ical specifications via a group discussion on the developer mailing list. = The best way to get started is to review the use cases listed in the develo= per wiki and to share questions or ideas for how each of our use cases shou= ld be implemented. For example, what application frameworks should be used,= and what technical standards should be observed, or what solutions may alr= eady exist. = = Your input on any of the use cases is most welcome. Each person can decid= e which use cases are of most interest. For example some may want to focus = on prior art, searching, or visualization techniques. So the time spent co= uld be as little as a few minutes to a couple hours. = = Here is the link to the developer wiki: http://tools.dotank.nyls.edu/wiki/index.php/Peer_2_Patent/developer = The full set of technical documents are here: http://communitypatent.typepad.com/project_docs/ = The mailing list archives for this month: http://lists.osdl.org/pipermail/p2patent-developer/2006-October/date.html = Thanks! Eric Hestenes Technical Lead eric.hestenes@communitypatent.org = = -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.linux-foundation.org/pipermail/p2patent-developer/attachm= ents/20061030/cc2106e4/attachment.htm From erichestenes at vikiwi.com Mon Oct 30 09:45:14 2006 From: erichestenes at vikiwi.com (Eric Hestenes) Date: Wed Apr 18 12:55:43 2007 Subject: [p2patent-developer] developer wiki updates Message-ID: <20061030174514.91503.qmail@web51404.mail.yahoo.com> The developer wiki documentation for the following use cases has been updat= ed. = = Use Case 2 - Setup new patent application http://tools.dotank.nyls.edu/wiki/index.php/Peer_2_Patent/developer/use_c= ases_discussion/uc2_setup = Use Case 5: Add a comment http://tools.dotank.nyls.edu/wiki/index.php/Peer_2_Patent/developer/use_c= ases_discussion/uc5_add_comment = Use Case 7: Submit Prior Art http://tools.dotank.nyls.edu/wiki/index.php?title=3DPeer_2_Patent/develop= er/use_cases_discussion/uc7_submit_prior_art = Use Case 3 - Find one specific patent application http://tools.dotank.nyls.edu/wiki/index.php/Peer_2_Patent/developer/use_c= ases_discussion/uc3_find_one = These use cases are highly interrelated and one of our key questions is w= hat application framework could be used to handle all these scenarios. Take= a look, feedback is welcome. = Thanks = Eric Hestenes Technical Lead NYLS Community Patent Review Project eric.hestenes@communitypatent.org = -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.linux-foundation.org/pipermail/p2patent-developer/attachm= ents/20061030/614be726/attachment.htm From josh at chapterthreellc.com Mon Oct 30 10:51:58 2006 From: josh at chapterthreellc.com (Josh Koenig) Date: Wed Apr 18 12:55:43 2007 Subject: [p2patent-developer] Digg / Slashdot as P2P platform? In-Reply-To: <008AE47B-9E47-4DE7-8936-C28FEC7EF567@chapterthreellc.com> References: <200610282208.k9SM8fPn002125@smtp.osdl.org> <008AE47B-9E47-4DE7-8936-C28FEC7EF567@chapterthreellc.com> Message-ID: > "I don't know the whole problem domain in P2P but I'm wondering why > we couldn't start by using a very robust existing system and > perhaps make smaller adaptions to fit our needs - rather than > building something from scratch?" I just wanted to second Zack's comments here. Digg is a great site to look towards for best-practices in terms of some functionality, but I think licensing their code as our base would be unwise, even if we could get it. Their codebase is site-specific, customized and undocumented. It was also built by just a few people, meaning if you're not one of those people it's really a task to grok what's going on. Most importantly Digg is not a technology platform provider. As soon as our functionality diverts from what they do (and/or we need to start managing updates) it will quickly get complex and time-consuming. I think we're better off implementing a digg-like interface -- along with the other stuff we will need in terms of prior art, metadata, etc -- via an existing content management framework or platform. That way we can make it look and feel like P2P, hook in the additional functions that are necessary as per the spec, and be in a good position to extend the site with new features down the road. However, building a rating and ranking system with AJAXian voting and the like is a great idea for the P2P site. Luckily for us it's not terribly hard to emulate Digg's functionality on other more extensible platforms. cheers -josh From erichestenes at vikiwi.com Mon Oct 30 14:50:46 2006 From: erichestenes at vikiwi.com (Eric Hestenes) Date: Wed Apr 18 12:55:43 2007 Subject: [p2patent-developer] Digg / Slashdot as P2P platform? In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20061030225046.86037.qmail@web51408.mail.yahoo.com> Hi Nick, Thanks for the response to this inquiry and your suggestions. = = What I hear described is a web service approach that would handle the sto= rage of comments and metadata in a way that is modular and logically separa= ted from the application that uses the data. One could imagine that our ap= plication is a subscriber to that service, and that other applications such= as 3rd party software could also subscribe to the service. If well-desig= ned it could be extensible to other types of metadata, but our initial focu= s would be on comments, claim rankings and prior art references. It does se= em that if we are capturing comments and prior art, one could open it up so= that others can subscribe to that information. = It sounds powerful, but I am wondering whether this is something that has= to be built from scratch, or we can build off some framework to get this f= unctionality. My understanding is that Kowari is designed for this. Other = areas we would have to look at are user identity management and how the rat= ings and rankings mechanism is related to the metadata service. = = The Open Source As Prior Art has also been exploring how metadata can be = organized (see http://osapa.org/wiki/index.php/OSSTag). = = The PLOS TOPAZ effort may soon have some of these features also but I am = wondering if there are other frameworks that we could build from. = = Is there any code framework that covers this type of functionality? = = Is using Kowari an approach of interest for the purposes you describe? = Sincerely, = Eric Hestenes Technical Lead NYLS Community Patent Review project Nick dos Remedios wrote: On 30/10/2006, at 3:56 PM, Eric Hestenes wrote: It would be interesting to hear if anyone in the developer community ha= s ideas or thoughts on this subject. One idea I have, is for sites such as patent database providers (I work a= t CAMBIA, which provides a free full text patent search - http://www.patent= lens.net/) to collect comments and peer reviews of patents and then share/p= ublish these "comments" with any other interested parties (other patent inf= ormatics sites, etc) via a centrally administered web services server (OSDL= ?). = = So, instead of relying on a single site to be the point of contact for su= bmission of patent reviews and prior art, etc, many sites, with different u= ser foci, could contribute to the effort. Bloggers could incorporate the we= b service just as easily as patent database providers. = For this to work, the web services schema would have to be flexible enoug= h to allow comments from a range of user perspectives (software patents, li= fe science patents, engineering patents, etc), while still enforcing a degr= ee of strictness necessary for proper prior art documentation. We have idea= s about also gathering information that falls outside the specs of the P2P = project, such as users sharing information on licensing of particular paten= ts as well as general comments about the technical issues relating to the p= ractice a given patented invention. = It has the drawback adding complexity and thus slowing the process. If to= o many players try to influence the schema/functionality then it could degr= ade into a lowest common denominator spec that is impractical to actually i= mplement. = It would be up to each site as to how to collect and display this data. H= owever I would expect there to be a collaboratively developed prototype web= client that could be used as a starting point as well as providing a way f= or bug fixes to be shared. = This would not be limited to patent database sites as it is now fairly ea= sy to access the EPO OPS web service (http://ops.espacenet.com/) to GET pat= ent data for a given patent number (their DocDB database has all jurisdicti= ons: front page data, family data and legal status) using a SOAP client. Th= e above mentioned web service could even provide this data itself! = Another idea is for the comment collection and publishing to come from a = single source but for other sites to be able to provide access to this serv= ice via a simple iframe. The iframe would display existing comments for tha= t patent (by passing a patent doc ID) and would also allow the user to add = comments to that patent. There may be technical problems with this idea due= to authentication, etc. and its really only an idea off the top of my head= right now. = = Anyway, thats my Monday morning babble... I hope it makes sense. = Nick ---- Nick dos Remedios, PhD CAMBIA = -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.linux-foundation.org/pipermail/p2patent-developer/attachm= ents/20061030/c678c08d/attachment.htm From gsmc at umich.edu Tue Oct 31 13:13:20 2006 From: gsmc at umich.edu (Gavin Clarkson) Date: Wed Apr 18 12:55:44 2007 Subject: [p2patent-developer] Prior art searching repository Message-ID: As a follow-on to an existing NSF grant that I am working on with folks from IBM-Almaden, I am working on a new NSF proposal that will test the hypothesis of whether distributed prior art searching is superior to a single expert searcher, and to do that will require the development of a prior art searching repository. While there appear to be good exemplars of post and comment systems in the online p2p community, I'm unaware of any of them that specifically support the process of collaborative search. Specifically, most would allow for the posting of an item identified during the process of a search, but do they allow for posting of information about how that search was conducted, or how it could be replicated? Thus, if someone finds one item and posts it (Use Case 7), but does not post another item that was found with the same search, if that second item was relevant, then another searcher would have to start a search process from scratch and hopefully find that second item. As I understand it, this situation differs from Use Case 13 in that the search would need to extend beyond the CPR website to identify the second item of prior art that was not submitted to the database. If the system is structured to facilitate knowledge transfer about the search as well as the results, then it may be possible to avoid some duplication of effort among the search community. I would be most interested in seeing how our efforts at Michigan can be dovetailed with the existing efforts to develop the peer-to-patent system. Thanks, --------------------------------------------- Dr. Gavin Clarkson Assistant Professor University of Michigan School of Information School of Law Native American Studies 304 West Hall, 1085 S. University Ave. Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1107 734-763-2284 734-764-2475 FAX gsmc@umich.edu http://www.si.umich.edu/~gsmc -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.linux-foundation.org/pipermail/p2patent-developer/attachments/20061031/b619ad87/attachment.htm From nick at cambia.org Tue Oct 31 15:58:50 2006 From: nick at cambia.org (Nick dos Remedios) Date: Wed Apr 18 12:55:44 2007 Subject: [p2patent-developer] Digg / Slashdot as P2P platform? In-Reply-To: <20061030225046.86037.qmail@web51408.mail.yahoo.com> References: <20061030225046.86037.qmail@web51408.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: Hi Eric, thanks for the feedback on my web services ideas. I have to admit that when I made my first post it had been quite a while since I had first read (cough... browsed) the project docs at http://www.communitypatent.org/project_docs/. The process described here is fairly narrow in scope and the ideas I have described assume a much wider scope, where any patent application or granted patent (from any jurisdiction) could be commented on with the aim of not only trying to provide prior art to invalidate claims but for a range of other useful purposes. So getting back on topic for the p2patent spec, I would at least like to see the comments submitted to the p2patent project being available as a web service to other parties to access and "include" in their sites. With the aim of linking back to the p2patent site to attract more comments by "experts" who have come via those third party sites. I haven't given it too much thought to the technology choices at this point but I agree that using an existing framework would be preferred. The TOPAZ project looks interesting as does Kowari. I don't have that much experience with web services and have no vested interest in any particular technology so I would defer to others with more knowledge when it came to making such technology decisions. Having built a simple prototype commenting system already (in-house), my experience is that designing the user interface and deciding on the data storage formats is the hardest part. My prototype used a "repository server" from a content managament system called Daisy (http://cocoondev.org/daisy/) to store & retrieve comments (combination of XML "parts" and database fields). The user interface (comment input) was a simple Cocoon flowscript and my patent search webapp (Perl code) called a REST web service from the repository server to display the comments. The actual coding part was done in a day. Deciding on the UI aspects and what data fields to store to make the commenting actual useful... we're still working on that ;-) The reason for choosing Daisy, was that we were already using it for our web sites as a CMS and I knew how it worked. It is limiting in some respects and I wouldn't recommend it for the p2patent project. I like some of the features of Fedora (http://www.fedora.info/), which TOPAZ is built in top of, in particular the "Extensible metadata management" and "Expressive inter-object relationships" aspects. Another thought I had was to use the idea of a mashup (http:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mashup_%28web_application_hybrid%29) to combine the data from a number of web services to create an AJAX-based web app, where most of the "mashing" is done in the browser. GWT is an obvious choice for this sort of thing. E.g. the "find a patent application" use case, could call a patent search web service (we are planning such a thing for our patent lens search service), which would then give the user a list of hits. When the user chooses a patent to view (browse a patent application), the browser then merges the patent data web service with a p2patent comment web service to produce a view with both data (patent text + existing user comments). etc. Cheers Nick On 31/10/2006, at 9:50 AM, Eric Hestenes wrote: > Hi Nick, > Thanks for the response to this inquiry and your suggestions. > > What I hear described is a web service approach that would handle > the storage of comments and metadata in a way that is modular and > logically separated from the application that uses the data. One > could imagine that our application is a subscriber to that service, > and that other applications such as 3rd party software could also > subscribe to the service. If well-designed it could be extensible > to other types of metadata, but our initial focus would be on > comments, claim rankings and prior art references. It does seem > that if we are capturing comments and prior art, one could open it > up so that others can subscribe to that information. > > It sounds powerful, but I am wondering whether this is something > that has to be built from scratch, or we can build off some > framework to get this functionality. My understanding is that > Kowari is designed for this. Other areas we would have to look at > are user identity management and how the ratings and rankings > mechanism is related to the metadata service. > > The Open Source As Prior Art has also been exploring how metadata > can be organized (see http://osapa.org/wiki/index.php/OSSTag). > > The PLOS TOPAZ effort may soon have some of these features also but > I am wondering if there are other frameworks that we could build from. > > Is there any code framework that covers this type of functionality? > > Is using Kowari an approach of interest for the purposes you describe? > > Sincerely, > > Eric Hestenes > Technical Lead > NYLS Community Patent Review project > > Nick dos Remedios wrote: > On 30/10/2006, at 3:56 PM, Eric Hestenes wrote: >> It would be interesting to hear if anyone in the developer >> community has ideas or thoughts on this subject. > > One idea I have, is for sites such as patent database providers (I > work at CAMBIA, which provides a free full text patent search - > http://www.patentlens.net/) to collect comments and peer reviews of > patents and then share/publish these "comments" with any other > interested parties (other patent informatics sites, etc) via a > centrally administered web services server (OSDL?). > > So, instead of relying on a single site to be the point of contact > for submission of patent reviews and prior art, etc, many sites, > with different user foci, could contribute to the effort. Bloggers > could incorporate the web service just as easily as patent database > providers. > > For this to work, the web services schema would have to be flexible > enough to allow comments from a range of user perspectives > (software patents, life science patents, engineering patents, etc), > while still enforcing a degree of strictness necessary for proper > prior art documentation. We have ideas about also gathering > information that falls outside the specs of the P2P project, such > as users sharing information on licensing of particular patents as > well as general comments about the technical issues relating to the > practice a given patented invention. > > It has the drawback adding complexity and thus slowing the process. > If too many players try to influence the schema/functionality then > it could degrade into a lowest common denominator spec that is > impractical to actually implement. > > It would be up to each site as to how to collect and display this > data. However I would expect there to be a collaboratively > developed prototype web client that could be used as a starting > point as well as providing a way for bug fixes to be shared. > > This would not be limited to patent database sites as it is now > fairly easy to access the EPO OPS web service (http:// > ops.espacenet.com/) to GET patent data for a given patent number > (their DocDB database has all jurisdictions: front page data, > family data and legal status) using a SOAP client. The above > mentioned web service could even provide this data itself! > > Another idea is for the comment collection and publishing to come > from a single source but for other sites to be able to provide > access to this service via a simple iframe. The iframe would > display existing comments for that patent (by passing a patent doc > ID) and would also allow the user to add comments to that patent. > There may be technical problems with this idea due to > authentication, etc. and its really only an idea off the top of my > head right now. > > Anyway, thats my Monday morning babble... I hope it makes sense. > > Nick > ---- > Nick dos Remedios, PhD > CAMBIA > > From b3eck at aim.com Sun Oct 15 22:02:17 2006 From: b3eck at aim.com (Brandon Beck) Date: Wed Apr 18 17:42:42 2007 Subject: [p2patent-developer] Collaborative Quality Assurance Message-ID: <45331259.6070206@aim.com> Two models have emerged for collaborative quality assurance, namely, Wikipedia and Google. One is based on recruiting content maintainers who ensure submission quality, and the other is based on developing ratings algorithms which ensure presentation quality. Since the Patent Office utilizes the former model, which has proved less-than-ideal in well-known Wikipedia disputes involving conflicts of interest, perhaps the best long-term alternative would be to invest in developing a system that determines the appropriate prior art as a byproduct of user interactions on the site. In either case, rewarding users for submitting appropriate prior art is critical to the success of Peer to Patent. From erichestenes at vikiwi.com Fri Oct 20 01:31:28 2006 From: erichestenes at vikiwi.com (Eric Hestenes) Date: Wed Apr 18 17:42:42 2007 Subject: [p2patent-developer] Welcome to the Peer to Patent Developer Mailing List Message-ID: <20061020083128.12986.qmail@web51411.mail.yahoo.com> Hi everyone, = = We finally have critical mass on the developer list and can get started w= ith a discussion of the software design. I=92d like to thank everyone who j= oined the Peer to Patent Developer mailing list and issue an open invitatio= n to include anyone else that would like to join. = = This will be a technically focused discussion list. Members of the list s= hould feel free at any time to post questions to the list about any of the = use cases or technical documents. We want to clarify the use cases and the = technical design and need help to flush out the details. To this end, there= is a now developer wiki which will allow editing the current proposals to = add information. = = If guidelines for postings are needed, a suggestion is to review the Apac= he Guidelines: http://jakarta.apache.org/site/mail.html = The immediate agenda for technical effort is to solidify a technical prop= osal for the Peer to Patent system. I would like to ask that we stay focuse= d on this discussion initially so that we can make some key decisions that = are holding up development. Any help you can provide on this is appreciated= . = = This is an open source project. Over time we hope to enroll some develope= rs from the community to the project as well. Anyone who wants to participa= te in the upcoming coding effort should contact me directly. It should be = an exciting effort with a real impact to the community. = The next message will be posted to the list shortly. = Thanks! = Eric Hestenes Technical Lead eric.hestenes@communitypatent.org = Project Documents link: http://www.communitypatent.org/project_docs/ = -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.linux-foundation.org/pipermail/p2patent-developer/attachm= ents/20061020/b121fba9/attachment-0001.htm From erichestenes at vikiwi.com Fri Oct 20 01:51:33 2006 From: erichestenes at vikiwi.com (Eric Hestenes) Date: Wed Apr 18 17:42:42 2007 Subject: [p2patent-developer] Questions about Use Case 2 Setup new patent application Message-ID: <20061020085133.77637.qmail@web51407.mail.yahoo.com> A good place to start the Peer to Patent system architecture discussion is = with use case number two. Some of the other use cases are very complicated = and we should work out how documents are stored early on before we tackle o= ther issues like prior art. = = We need to determine how to store patent applications and associated meta= data (such as comments, ratings, and prior art) in our system, so that we c= an engage in community activities. Use case 2 (UC2) describes our current a= ssumptions about how patent applications should be setup in the system. = = Please review the background page link below before responding to the que= stions. = = http://tools.dotank.nyls.edu/wiki/index.php/Peer_2_Patent/developer/use_c= ases_discussion/uc2_setup = or try http://tinyurl.com/y4opcu = This is a request for your feedback on the following questions for relate= d to Use Case #2: = Questions: = (1) Can we avoid storing the document as XML in a datastore and instead = work exclusively with the USPTO patent application identifier? One could a= rgue that all we really need to store is metadata along with the user ident= ity and the patent application identifier. Is XML necessary? Is it overkil= l? = (2) Are there any standard XML formats that we can take advantage of tha= t will support all these requirements? The NLM DTD has been mentioned as a = possibility. What formats should be considered? = (3) Is there any existing open source content management system that is = well suited for the listed requirements? This option might be acceptable i= f we could do some customization. There are plenty of CMS tools that are n= ot suitable; which solutions might actually work? = = (4) Are there other standards that should investigated related to the da= ta format for the storage of the patent application or metadata? = = Responses should go to the mailing list. Please feel free to put architec= tural proposals or suggestions and background information directly into the= Wiki page. (Please change section D only!). = Thanks! = Eric Hestenes Technical Lead eric.hestenes@communitypatent.org = Project Documents link: http://www.communitypatent.org/project_docs/ = -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.linux-foundation.org/pipermail/p2patent-developer/attachm= ents/20061020/401fd4fc/attachment-0001.htm From josh at chapterthreellc.com Fri Oct 20 09:42:41 2006 From: josh at chapterthreellc.com (Josh Koenig) Date: Wed Apr 18 17:42:42 2007 Subject: [p2patent-developer] Questions about Use Case 2 Setup new patent application In-Reply-To: <20061020085133.77637.qmail@web51407.mail.yahoo.com> References: <20061020085133.77637.qmail@web51407.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: First of all, thanks for kicking this off, Eric. The documentation you've produced already is fantastic in its granularity and comprehensiveness, and it should produce a great application. I'm excited to be involved in these discussions. And now to the questions at hand... > Is XML necessary? Is it overkill? I would say XML is probably overkill here, or at least premature. Creating a data structure that can be imported/exported as XML is an absolute necessity, but implementing the tool around an XML datastore would be much more slow and onerous than just using a plain-ol' SQL database. It seems to me that what we need is a solid specification which can be turned into SQL and then fronted to users as HTML through a content-management system, and also "fed out" as whatever XML format (if any) emerges as a standard in the Academic community. Ditto for importing content as standards emerge. Basically, my core feeling is that building applications around XML- based data storage is not the way to go. XML formats make fantastic glue to connect disparate systems, but the utility and ubiquity of SQL for a web-application's local datastore is undeniable. > Is there any existing open source content management system that is > well suited for the listed requirements? I'm completely confidant that Drupal can swing this application. It's really a database application framework with content-management and a user/access system built in. There's a very flexible and mature system for taxonomy and data-type specifications, as well as good tools for controlling workflows, adding ratings and comments, and the sorts of social-networking functions we want to see. I have a bias here as Drupal is my expertise, but it's a growing community of 1000s of active developers and 100s of 1000s of sites, and it's a great way to rapidly prototype, refine and launch community web applications. It's built on LAMP so the skills to mod are widely held and the TCO is low, and even though it doesn't look like a million dollars out of the box, a skilled theme-maker can give it a keen glossy shine. Plus the upcoming version 5.0 includes all sorts of AJAX goodies and tools for building cutting-edge "Web 2.0" user interfaces. http://www.drupal.org Anyway, as I said I have a bias, but I don't think it's an unfounded or ill advised one. I'd be happy to answer any questions folks might have. > (4) Are there other standards that should investigated related to > the data format for the storage of the patent application or metadata? Again, I think the important thing here is to get the data specification right and implement that through a good SQL database structure. In terms of what data to store, it seems to make sense to look at work that's going on in the scientific community, but from what I can see there's no clear standard. But that's not a big problem. In the open world, formats are fungible; I think for this work functionality comes first. Ok! Looking forward to what's next! cheers -josh Josh Koenig, Partner josh@chapterthreellc.com 1-888-822-4273 From public at misuse.org Sat Oct 28 15:08:34 2006 From: public at misuse.org (Steve Midgley) Date: Wed Apr 18 17:42:42 2007 Subject: [p2patent-developer] Digg / Slashdot as P2P platform? Message-ID: <200610282208.k9SM8fPn002125@smtp.osdl.org> Hi, I've been thinking about the platform decisions for P2P a little and am wondering why this system doesn't just run on top of an existing tool that does basically the same thing? Digg and Slashdot are essentially P2P-like in their functionality. Slashdot's code is open source and available (though ugly). Possibly Digg could be convinced to licensed use for this specific project (esp. b/c Omidyar supports P2P and Digg).. Here's my rationale (I'll use Digg because I think it's a slightly closer fit - Slashdot is roughly equiv..) In Digg, contributors post articles w/links and classify them within topics. Readers can subscribe (RSS) to articles according to topics. Within a topic, users can post comments & links. The value of the comments themselves are also rated by other users using a simple interface. Users themselves can be tracked by the value of their overall contributions. Comments can be "masked" to only allow the most highly rates comments to be seen - they can also be sorted by their rating.. In the P2P world, contributors would be patent holders who publish their work for community review. Readers would be domain experts who self assign to topics and get notified when new patents are posted. Comments would be expert review and discussion. Experts can rate other comments. I don't know the whole problem domain in P2P but I'm wondering why we couldn't start by using a very robust existing system and perhaps make smaller adaptions to fit our needs - rather than building something from scratch? Any input? Best, Steve From erichestenes at vikiwi.com Sun Oct 29 20:56:15 2006 From: erichestenes at vikiwi.com (Eric Hestenes) Date: Wed Apr 18 17:42:42 2007 Subject: [p2patent-developer] Digg / Slashdot as P2P platform? In-Reply-To: <200610282208.k9SM8fPn002125@smtp.osdl.org> Message-ID: <20061030045615.22949.qmail@web51405.mail.yahoo.com> Hi Steve, Thanks for the post and interesting suggestions. Tools like slashcode and= digg definitely are strong with respect to getting community feedback on l= inked articles and such. So, for example, if you posted the text of a paten= t application as an article, one can imagine using these tools for communit= y comments and ratings on those making the comments. = = My initial questions about this approach are: = * How would prior art references be handled? Is it treated like an articl= e? How is it stored? = One of the big features of the Peer to patent system will be the ability = to submit prior art references. (see Use Cases 7 and 13). In many instances= these references could be citations to journal articles, or other formats = including URLs or patent numbers. So for example, it could include a title,= volume number, year of publication, page numbers, and optional commentary = by the person who created the citation. Unlike a news article or URL, there= may be no interesting text to read with the citation. Over time, one can i= magine accumulating quite a large database of prior art references, which t= ypically consists of pointers to data that is stored somewhere else. = = So one question with the model of slashcode or digg, is whether these pri= or art reference metadata would have to be stored in an operational data st= ore (database), or are stored using some other approach. It would seem real= ly hard to avoid using a data store for this information. A community rank= ed list of the prior art will be forwarded to the patent examiner, so the c= ommunity input system has to be able to cope with this kind of data. = = It would be interesting to hear if anyone in the developer community has = ideas or thoughts on this subject. = = Thanks Eric Hestenes Technical Lead eric.hestenes@communitypatent.org = =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D= =3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D = Use Case: http://www.communitypatent.org/use_cases/use_case_7_submit_prior_art/inde= x.html = Current Thinking: http://tinyurl.com/ybqhst or http://tools.dotank.nyls.edu/wiki/index.php?title=3DPeer_2_Patent/develop= er/use_cases_discussion/uc7_submit_prior_art = = = Steve Midgley wrote: Hi, I've been thinking about the platform decisions for P2P a little and am = wondering why this system doesn't just run on top of an existing tool = that does basically the same thing? Digg and Slashdot are essentially = P2P-like in their functionality. Slashdot's code is open source and = available (though ugly). Possibly Digg could be convinced to licensed = use for this specific project (esp. b/c Omidyar supports P2P and = Digg).. Here's my rationale (I'll use Digg because I think it's a slightly = closer fit - Slashdot is roughly equiv..) In Digg, contributors post = articles w/links and classify them within topics. Readers can subscribe = (RSS) to articles according to topics. Within a topic, users can post = comments & links. The value of the comments themselves are also rated = by other users using a simple interface. Users themselves can be = tracked by the value of their overall contributions. Comments can be = "masked" to only allow the most highly rates comments to be seen - they = can also be sorted by their rating.. In the P2P world, contributors would be patent holders who publish = their work for community review. Readers would be domain experts who = self assign to topics and get notified when new patents are posted. = Comments would be expert review and discussion. Experts can rate other = comments. I don't know the whole problem domain in P2P but I'm wondering why we = couldn't start by using a very robust existing system and perhaps make = smaller adaptions to fit our needs - rather than building something = from scratch? Any input? Best, Steve _______________________________________________ p2patent-developer mailing list p2patent-developer@lists.osdl.org https://lists.osdl.org/mailman/listinfo/p2patent-developer -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.linux-foundation.org/pipermail/p2patent-developer/attachm= ents/20061029/ac0855ef/attachment-0001.htm From nick at cambia.org Sun Oct 29 22:12:21 2006 From: nick at cambia.org (Nick dos Remedios) Date: Wed Apr 18 17:42:42 2007 Subject: [p2patent-developer] Digg / Slashdot as P2P platform? In-Reply-To: <20061030045615.22949.qmail@web51405.mail.yahoo.com> References: <20061030045615.22949.qmail@web51405.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: On 30/10/2006, at 3:56 PM, Eric Hestenes wrote: > It would be interesting to hear if anyone in the developer > community has ideas or thoughts on this subject. One idea I have, is for sites such as patent database providers (I work at CAMBIA, which provides a free full text patent search - http://www.patentlens.net/) to collect comments and peer reviews of patents and then share/publish these "comments" with any other interested parties (other patent informatics sites, etc) via a centrally administered web services server (OSDL?). So, instead of relying on a single site to be the point of contact for submission of patent reviews and prior art, etc, many sites, with different user foci, could contribute to the effort. Bloggers could incorporate the web service just as easily as patent database providers. For this to work, the web services schema would have to be flexible enough to allow comments from a range of user perspectives (software patents, life science patents, engineering patents, etc), while still enforcing a degree of strictness necessary for proper prior art documentation. We have ideas about also gathering information that falls outside the specs of the P2P project, such as users sharing information on licensing of particular patents as well as general comments about the technical issues relating to the practice a given patented invention. It has the drawback adding complexity and thus slowing the process. If too many players try to influence the schema/functionality then it could degrade into a lowest common denominator spec that is impractical to actually implement. It would be up to each site as to how to collect and display this data. However I would expect there to be a collaboratively developed prototype web client that could be used as a starting point as well as providing a way for bug fixes to be shared. This would not be limited to patent database sites as it is now fairly easy to access the EPO OPS web service (http:// ops.espacenet.com/) to GET patent data for a given patent number (their DocDB database has all jurisdictions: front page data, family data and legal status) using a SOAP client. The above mentioned web service could even provide this data itself! Another idea is for the comment collection and publishing to come from a single source but for other sites to be able to provide access to this service via a simple iframe. The iframe would display existing comments for that patent (by passing a patent doc ID) and would also allow the user to add comments to that patent. There may be technical problems with this idea due to authentication, etc. and its really only an idea off the top of my head right now. Anyway, thats my Monday morning babble... I hope it makes sense. Nick ---- Nick dos Remedios, PhD CAMBIA -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.linux-foundation.org/pipermail/p2patent-developer/attachments/20061030/f5a85a3b/attachment-0001.htm From zack at chapterthreellc.com Mon Oct 30 09:19:37 2006 From: zack at chapterthreellc.com (Zack Rosen) Date: Wed Apr 18 17:42:42 2007 Subject: [p2patent-developer] Digg / Slashdot as P2P platform? In-Reply-To: <200610282208.k9SM8fPn002125@smtp.osdl.org> References: <200610282208.k9SM8fPn002125@smtp.osdl.org> Message-ID: <008AE47B-9E47-4DE7-8936-C28FEC7EF567@chapterthreellc.com> "I don't know the whole problem domain in P2P but I'm wondering why we couldn't start by using a very robust existing system and perhaps make smaller adaptions to fit our needs - rather than building something from scratch?" Absolutely! I see no reason to build a custom CMS (content management system) for this project. This would greatly increase up-front development costs and would be an unnecessary yoke on the project as we would be responsible for developing all site features alone. And it would be completely unnecessary, we would gain no additional flexibility by doing this, only forfeit functionality and support. I also agree with you that the Digg.com website has many of the features that we would like to see in the P2P project, and I think we have a lot to learn from them in terms of how to build a highly usable and fun community experience. They've put an awful lot of thought into their interface and design and it shows. That said, I am pessimistic about trying to use their code base directly for this project. Even if we could obtain it, unless it almost exactly met our needs out-of-box now and into the future it wouldn't make sense to use for these reasons: Functionality: From a design and usability perspective Digg.com is stellar. From a technology perspective Digg.com is not very interesting. Open source platforms such as Drupal can recreate 90% or more of the functionality currently seen on Digg.com out-of-box, and offer much more beyond that. While digg.com is afforded the features that are developed by the ~6 or so full time employees of the companies, communities like Drupal benefit from the literally hundreds of community code contributors. Flexibility: Building your site on technology provided by a partner which considers providing that technology as a secondary business is overly risky. - Support: For a startup like Digg, getting bogged down supporting a non-paying partner will be very tough to deal with. Digg will have limited resources and will naturally have to prioritize what they concentrate on. When push comes to shove primary business will come first and secondary will be supported as time permits. - Contingency: The risk of Digg as a company going out of business and taking their back-end technology with them are far greater than that of an established technology vendor or open-source product. - Technology: The Digg back end technology was developed primarily to meet the business needs of Digg, it was not developed as a reusable platform. This will drive up costs for you for customization and feature development compared to platform technologies built to be used by others. TCO: A maxim of IT managers everywhere is 'the cost is not what you pay for up front it's what you pay over time'. The pace of technology evolution and the adaptive requirements of technology owners usually generates greater 'hidden' costs than the price tag purchasers are quoted upfront. In all likely hood the cost of acquiring and setting up the Digg.com codebase would be far out- weighed by additional costs in building out the P2P web site over time. This means that the real technology investment question is not "what gets us from A to B cheapest and easiest" but "how much is this going to cost for the life-cycle of the project?". I am sure that the costs incurred by the inflexibility of the Digg.com code-base over time will be far greater than the costs to implement the P2P on a reusable open-source platform like Drupal. -Zack On Oct 28, 2006, at 3:08 PM, Steve Midgley wrote: > I've been thinking about the platform decisions for P2P a little > and am > wondering why this system doesn't just run on top of an existing tool > that does basically the same thing? Digg and Slashdot are essentially > P2P-like in their functionality. Slashdot's code is open source and > available (though ugly). Possibly Digg could be convinced to licensed > use for this specific project (esp. b/c Omidyar supports P2P and > Digg).. > > Here's my rationale (I'll use Digg because I think it's a slightly > closer fit - Slashdot is roughly equiv..) In Digg, contributors post > articles w/links and classify them within topics. Readers can > subscribe > (RSS) to articles according to topics. Within a topic, users can post > comments & links. The value of the comments themselves are also rated > by other users using a simple interface. Users themselves can be > tracked by the value of their overall contributions. Comments can be > "masked" to only allow the most highly rates comments to be seen - > they > can also be sorted by their rating.. > > In the P2P world, contributors would be patent holders who publish > their work for community review. Readers would be domain experts who > self assign to topics and get notified when new patents are posted. > Comments would be expert review and discussion. Experts can rate other > comments. > > I don't know the whole problem domain in P2P but I'm wondering why we > couldn't start by using a very robust existing system and perhaps make > smaller adaptions to fit our needs - rather than building something > from scratch? -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.linux-foundation.org/pipermail/p2patent-developer/attachments/20061030/7ca54a6c/attachment-0001.htm From erichestenes at vikiwi.com Mon Oct 30 09:36:33 2006 From: erichestenes at vikiwi.com (Eric Hestenes) Date: Wed Apr 18 17:42:42 2007 Subject: [p2patent-developer] specification updates Message-ID: <20061030173633.75732.qmail@web51407.mail.yahoo.com> Hi everyone, = We have had quite a few new members join the Peer to Patent developer mai= ling list in the last two weeks. For those new to this list, here is a rec= ap of our goals. We are looking for your input and suggestions on our techn= ical specifications via a group discussion on the developer mailing list. = The best way to get started is to review the use cases listed in the develo= per wiki and to share questions or ideas for how each of our use cases shou= ld be implemented. For example, what application frameworks should be used,= and what technical standards should be observed, or what solutions may alr= eady exist. = = Your input on any of the use cases is most welcome. Each person can decid= e which use cases are of most interest. For example some may want to focus = on prior art, searching, or visualization techniques. So the time spent co= uld be as little as a few minutes to a couple hours. = = Here is the link to the developer wiki: http://tools.dotank.nyls.edu/wiki/index.php/Peer_2_Patent/developer = The full set of technical documents are here: http://communitypatent.typepad.com/project_docs/ = The mailing list archives for this month: http://lists.osdl.org/pipermail/p2patent-developer/2006-October/date.html = Thanks! Eric Hestenes Technical Lead eric.hestenes@communitypatent.org = = -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.linux-foundation.org/pipermail/p2patent-developer/attachm= ents/20061030/cc2106e4/attachment-0001.htm From erichestenes at vikiwi.com Mon Oct 30 09:45:14 2006 From: erichestenes at vikiwi.com (Eric Hestenes) Date: Wed Apr 18 17:42:42 2007 Subject: [p2patent-developer] developer wiki updates Message-ID: <20061030174514.91503.qmail@web51404.mail.yahoo.com> The developer wiki documentation for the following use cases has been updat= ed. = = Use Case 2 - Setup new patent application http://tools.dotank.nyls.edu/wiki/index.php/Peer_2_Patent/developer/use_c= ases_discussion/uc2_setup = Use Case 5: Add a comment http://tools.dotank.nyls.edu/wiki/index.php/Peer_2_Patent/developer/use_c= ases_discussion/uc5_add_comment = Use Case 7: Submit Prior Art http://tools.dotank.nyls.edu/wiki/index.php?title=3DPeer_2_Patent/develop= er/use_cases_discussion/uc7_submit_prior_art = Use Case 3 - Find one specific patent application http://tools.dotank.nyls.edu/wiki/index.php/Peer_2_Patent/developer/use_c= ases_discussion/uc3_find_one = These use cases are highly interrelated and one of our key questions is w= hat application framework could be used to handle all these scenarios. Take= a look, feedback is welcome. = Thanks = Eric Hestenes Technical Lead NYLS Community Patent Review Project eric.hestenes@communitypatent.org = -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.linux-foundation.org/pipermail/p2patent-developer/attachm= ents/20061030/614be726/attachment-0001.htm From josh at chapterthreellc.com Mon Oct 30 10:51:58 2006 From: josh at chapterthreellc.com (Josh Koenig) Date: Wed Apr 18 17:42:42 2007 Subject: [p2patent-developer] Digg / Slashdot as P2P platform? In-Reply-To: <008AE47B-9E47-4DE7-8936-C28FEC7EF567@chapterthreellc.com> References: <200610282208.k9SM8fPn002125@smtp.osdl.org> <008AE47B-9E47-4DE7-8936-C28FEC7EF567@chapterthreellc.com> Message-ID: > "I don't know the whole problem domain in P2P but I'm wondering why > we couldn't start by using a very robust existing system and > perhaps make smaller adaptions to fit our needs - rather than > building something from scratch?" I just wanted to second Zack's comments here. Digg is a great site to look towards for best-practices in terms of some functionality, but I think licensing their code as our base would be unwise, even if we could get it. Their codebase is site-specific, customized and undocumented. It was also built by just a few people, meaning if you're not one of those people it's really a task to grok what's going on. Most importantly Digg is not a technology platform provider. As soon as our functionality diverts from what they do (and/or we need to start managing updates) it will quickly get complex and time-consuming. I think we're better off implementing a digg-like interface -- along with the other stuff we will need in terms of prior art, metadata, etc -- via an existing content management framework or platform. That way we can make it look and feel like P2P, hook in the additional functions that are necessary as per the spec, and be in a good position to extend the site with new features down the road. However, building a rating and ranking system with AJAXian voting and the like is a great idea for the P2P site. Luckily for us it's not terribly hard to emulate Digg's functionality on other more extensible platforms. cheers -josh From erichestenes at vikiwi.com Mon Oct 30 14:50:46 2006 From: erichestenes at vikiwi.com (Eric Hestenes) Date: Wed Apr 18 17:42:42 2007 Subject: [p2patent-developer] Digg / Slashdot as P2P platform? In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <20061030225046.86037.qmail@web51408.mail.yahoo.com> Hi Nick, Thanks for the response to this inquiry and your suggestions. = = What I hear described is a web service approach that would handle the sto= rage of comments and metadata in a way that is modular and logically separa= ted from the application that uses the data. One could imagine that our ap= plication is a subscriber to that service, and that other applications such= as 3rd party software could also subscribe to the service. If well-desig= ned it could be extensible to other types of metadata, but our initial focu= s would be on comments, claim rankings and prior art references. It does se= em that if we are capturing comments and prior art, one could open it up so= that others can subscribe to that information. = It sounds powerful, but I am wondering whether this is something that has= to be built from scratch, or we can build off some framework to get this f= unctionality. My understanding is that Kowari is designed for this. Other = areas we would have to look at are user identity management and how the rat= ings and rankings mechanism is related to the metadata service. = = The Open Source As Prior Art has also been exploring how metadata can be = organized (see http://osapa.org/wiki/index.php/OSSTag). = = The PLOS TOPAZ effort may soon have some of these features also but I am = wondering if there are other frameworks that we could build from. = = Is there any code framework that covers this type of functionality? = = Is using Kowari an approach of interest for the purposes you describe? = Sincerely, = Eric Hestenes Technical Lead NYLS Community Patent Review project Nick dos Remedios wrote: On 30/10/2006, at 3:56 PM, Eric Hestenes wrote: It would be interesting to hear if anyone in the developer community ha= s ideas or thoughts on this subject. One idea I have, is for sites such as patent database providers (I work a= t CAMBIA, which provides a free full text patent search - http://www.patent= lens.net/) to collect comments and peer reviews of patents and then share/p= ublish these "comments" with any other interested parties (other patent inf= ormatics sites, etc) via a centrally administered web services server (OSDL= ?). = = So, instead of relying on a single site to be the point of contact for su= bmission of patent reviews and prior art, etc, many sites, with different u= ser foci, could contribute to the effort. Bloggers could incorporate the we= b service just as easily as patent database providers. = For this to work, the web services schema would have to be flexible enoug= h to allow comments from a range of user perspectives (software patents, li= fe science patents, engineering patents, etc), while still enforcing a degr= ee of strictness necessary for proper prior art documentation. We have idea= s about also gathering information that falls outside the specs of the P2P = project, such as users sharing information on licensing of particular paten= ts as well as general comments about the technical issues relating to the p= ractice a given patented invention. = It has the drawback adding complexity and thus slowing the process. If to= o many players try to influence the schema/functionality then it could degr= ade into a lowest common denominator spec that is impractical to actually i= mplement. = It would be up to each site as to how to collect and display this data. H= owever I would expect there to be a collaboratively developed prototype web= client that could be used as a starting point as well as providing a way f= or bug fixes to be shared. = This would not be limited to patent database sites as it is now fairly ea= sy to access the EPO OPS web service (http://ops.espacenet.com/) to GET pat= ent data for a given patent number (their DocDB database has all jurisdicti= ons: front page data, family data and legal status) using a SOAP client. Th= e above mentioned web service could even provide this data itself! = Another idea is for the comment collection and publishing to come from a = single source but for other sites to be able to provide access to this serv= ice via a simple iframe. The iframe would display existing comments for tha= t patent (by passing a patent doc ID) and would also allow the user to add = comments to that patent. There may be technical problems with this idea due= to authentication, etc. and its really only an idea off the top of my head= right now. = = Anyway, thats my Monday morning babble... I hope it makes sense. = Nick ---- Nick dos Remedios, PhD CAMBIA = -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.linux-foundation.org/pipermail/p2patent-developer/attachm= ents/20061030/c678c08d/attachment-0001.htm From gsmc at umich.edu Tue Oct 31 13:13:20 2006 From: gsmc at umich.edu (Gavin Clarkson) Date: Wed Apr 18 17:42:42 2007 Subject: [p2patent-developer] Prior art searching repository Message-ID: As a follow-on to an existing NSF grant that I am working on with folks from IBM-Almaden, I am working on a new NSF proposal that will test the hypothesis of whether distributed prior art searching is superior to a single expert searcher, and to do that will require the development of a prior art searching repository. While there appear to be good exemplars of post and comment systems in the online p2p community, I'm unaware of any of them that specifically support the process of collaborative search. Specifically, most would allow for the posting of an item identified during the process of a search, but do they allow for posting of information about how that search was conducted, or how it could be replicated? Thus, if someone finds one item and posts it (Use Case 7), but does not post another item that was found with the same search, if that second item was relevant, then another searcher would have to start a search process from scratch and hopefully find that second item. As I understand it, this situation differs from Use Case 13 in that the search would need to extend beyond the CPR website to identify the second item of prior art that was not submitted to the database. If the system is structured to facilitate knowledge transfer about the search as well as the results, then it may be possible to avoid some duplication of effort among the search community. I would be most interested in seeing how our efforts at Michigan can be dovetailed with the existing efforts to develop the peer-to-patent system. Thanks, --------------------------------------------- Dr. Gavin Clarkson Assistant Professor University of Michigan School of Information School of Law Native American Studies 304 West Hall, 1085 S. University Ave. Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1107 734-763-2284 734-764-2475 FAX gsmc@umich.edu http://www.si.umich.edu/~gsmc -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.linux-foundation.org/pipermail/p2patent-developer/attachments/20061031/b619ad87/attachment-0001.htm From nick at cambia.org Tue Oct 31 15:58:50 2006 From: nick at cambia.org (Nick dos Remedios) Date: Wed Apr 18 17:42:42 2007 Subject: [p2patent-developer] Digg / Slashdot as P2P platform? In-Reply-To: <20061030225046.86037.qmail@web51408.mail.yahoo.com> References: <20061030225046.86037.qmail@web51408.mail.yahoo.com> Message-ID: Hi Eric, thanks for the feedback on my web services ideas. I have to admit that when I made my first post it had been quite a while since I had first read (cough... browsed) the project docs at http://www.communitypatent.org/project_docs/. The process described here is fairly narrow in scope and the ideas I have described assume a much wider scope, where any patent application or granted patent (from any jurisdiction) could be commented on with the aim of not only trying to provide prior art to invalidate claims but for a range of other useful purposes. So getting back on topic for the p2patent spec, I would at least like to see the comments submitted to the p2patent project being available as a web service to other parties to access and "include" in their sites. With the aim of linking back to the p2patent site to attract more comments by "experts" who have come via those third party sites. I haven't given it too much thought to the technology choices at this point but I agree that using an existing framework would be preferred. The TOPAZ project looks interesting as does Kowari. I don't have that much experience with web services and have no vested interest in any particular technology so I would defer to others with more knowledge when it came to making such technology decisions. Having built a simple prototype commenting system already (in-house), my experience is that designing the user interface and deciding on the data storage formats is the hardest part. My prototype used a "repository server" from a content managament system called Daisy (http://cocoondev.org/daisy/) to store & retrieve comments (combination of XML "parts" and database fields). The user interface (comment input) was a simple Cocoon flowscript and my patent search webapp (Perl code) called a REST web service from the repository server to display the comments. The actual coding part was done in a day. Deciding on the UI aspects and what data fields to store to make the commenting actual useful... we're still working on that ;-) The reason for choosing Daisy, was that we were already using it for our web sites as a CMS and I knew how it worked. It is limiting in some respects and I wouldn't recommend it for the p2patent project. I like some of the features of Fedora (http://www.fedora.info/), which TOPAZ is built in top of, in particular the "Extensible metadata management" and "Expressive inter-object relationships" aspects. Another thought I had was to use the idea of a mashup (http:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mashup_%28web_application_hybrid%29) to combine the data from a number of web services to create an AJAX-based web app, where most of the "mashing" is done in the browser. GWT is an obvious choice for this sort of thing. E.g. the "find a patent application" use case, could call a patent search web service (we are planning such a thing for our patent lens search service), which would then give the user a list of hits. When the user chooses a patent to view (browse a patent application), the browser then merges the patent data web service with a p2patent comment web service to produce a view with both data (patent text + existing user comments). etc. Cheers Nick On 31/10/2006, at 9:50 AM, Eric Hestenes wrote: > Hi Nick, > Thanks for the response to this inquiry and your suggestions. > > What I hear described is a web service approach that would handle > the storage of comments and metadata in a way that is modular and > logically separated from the application that uses the data. One > could imagine that our application is a subscriber to that service, > and that other applications such as 3rd party software could also > subscribe to the service. If well-designed it could be extensible > to other types of metadata, but our initial focus would be on > comments, claim rankings and prior art references. It does seem > that if we are capturing comments and prior art, one could open it > up so that others can subscribe to that information. > > It sounds powerful, but I am wondering whether this is something > that has to be built from scratch, or we can build off some > framework to get this functionality. My understanding is that > Kowari is designed for this. Other areas we would have to look at > are user identity management and how the ratings and rankings > mechanism is related to the metadata service. > > The Open Source As Prior Art has also been exploring how metadata > can be organized (see http://osapa.org/wiki/index.php/OSSTag). > > The PLOS TOPAZ effort may soon have some of these features also but > I am wondering if there are other frameworks that we could build from. > > Is there any code framework that covers this type of functionality? > > Is using Kowari an approach of interest for the purposes you describe? > > Sincerely, > > Eric Hestenes > Technical Lead > NYLS Community Patent Review project > > Nick dos Remedios wrote: > On 30/10/2006, at 3:56 PM, Eric Hestenes wrote: >> It would be interesting to hear if anyone in the developer >> community has ideas or thoughts on this subject. > > One idea I have, is for sites such as patent database providers (I > work at CAMBIA, which provides a free full text patent search - > http://www.patentlens.net/) to collect comments and peer reviews of > patents and then share/publish these "comments" with any other > interested parties (other patent informatics sites, etc) via a > centrally administered web services server (OSDL?). > > So, instead of relying on a single site to be the point of contact > for submission of patent reviews and prior art, etc, many sites, > with different user foci, could contribute to the effort. Bloggers > could incorporate the web service just as easily as patent database > providers. > > For this to work, the web services schema would have to be flexible > enough to allow comments from a range of user perspectives > (software patents, life science patents, engineering patents, etc), > while still enforcing a degree of strictness necessary for proper > prior art documentation. We have ideas about also gathering > information that falls outside the specs of the P2P project, such > as users sharing information on licensing of particular patents as > well as general comments about the technical issues relating to the > practice a given patented invention. > > It has the drawback adding complexity and thus slowing the process. > If too many players try to influence the schema/functionality then > it could degrade into a lowest common denominator spec that is > impractical to actually implement. > > It would be up to each site as to how to collect and display this > data. However I would expect there to be a collaboratively > developed prototype web client that could be used as a starting > point as well as providing a way for bug fixes to be shared. > > This would not be limited to patent database sites as it is now > fairly easy to access the EPO OPS web service (http:// > ops.espacenet.com/) to GET patent data for a given patent number > (their DocDB database has all jurisdictions: front page data, > family data and legal status) using a SOAP client. The above > mentioned web service could even provide this data itself! > > Another idea is for the comment collection and publishing to come > from a single source but for other sites to be able to provide > access to this service via a simple iframe. The iframe would > display existing comments for that patent (by passing a patent doc > ID) and would also allow the user to add comments to that patent. > There may be technical problems with this idea due to > authentication, etc. and its really only an idea off the top of my > head right now. > > Anyway, thats my Monday morning babble... I hope it makes sense. > > Nick > ---- > Nick dos Remedios, PhD > CAMBIA > >