The federal government holds title to over 45,000 patents, which any business can use directly or adapt for a new invention. Except in limited circumstances, licensing government-owned patents is royalty free, revocable, and nonexclusive. However, most entrepreneurs do not know about these resources and those who do commonly have trouble locating them.
Since U.S. patents are already accessible through an online database, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) should now make it easier to search that database for government-owned patents in areas of interest to the user. In the United Kingdom, for example, the Intellectual Property Office makes it possible to sort patents by those that are Endorsed License of Right or Not in Force, categories that can be licensed at little or no cost. A similar approach with sophisticated search functionality could greatly facilitate the use of government patents available free of charge. Additionally, providing easy access to information about expired patents would facilitate follow-on innovation.
The USPTO should continue to implement its Open Data Initiative roadmap and select one of their open data platforms to add this functionality. One option is USPTO’s PAIR Bulk Data (beta), which allows users to download data in bulk form with an application programming interface (API), making it possible to load the data into databases or other analytical tools for research and analysis. APIs power a majority of mobile applications, many IT programs, and create a market for the private sector to develop data-driven products and services. USPTO’s Open Data Initiative includes plans to continue improving the discoverability, accessibility, and usability of public patent and trademark information though APIs. Another potential platform to provide this functionality is PatentsView.org, a data visualization platform displaying over 40 years of patent data. PatentsView represented a significant step forward in opening and improving patent data, and could be improved further.
Although PAIR Bulk Data (beta) and PatentsView both include government patents, they do not yet provide a way to search for all government-owned patents or easily show patents that are available for free license, such as those that have expired. Improved search capabilities on one or both of these platforms would make it possible to easily find free government-owned intellectual property and to search by fields such as agriculture, renewable energy, or other areas.
USPTO has been experimenting with new, sophisticated approaches to improving search functionality that could be applied to help users find government-owned patents. The USPTO is a partner in the White House Cancer Moonshot, a billion-dollar initiative to develop new approaches to treating cancer. The Moonshot includes a public challenge to use data from the USPTO, the National Institutes of Health, and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, to identify trends, build visualizations, and analyze factors such as cancer types, diagnosis methods, survival rates, clinical trials, and more. In order to facilitate this challenge, USPTO has developed new ways to search patents by key words and concepts that could help lead to strategies for identifying government-owned patents as well.
By reducing the barriers to locating government-owned intellectual property, USPTO will empower entrepreneurs, businesses, and inventors to capitalize on these resources.