In This Issue Return to LES Home LES Spring Meeting: Hot IP Topics Featured In Atlanta President's Message: The Licensed Patent Challenge CLP Design Team Seeks Your Input New Alliances Lead To Breakthrough Webinars Sector Spotlight Chemicals, Energy and Materials Sector: CEMC Activities At LES Winter Meeting High Technology Sector: New Digital Content Committee Kicks Off At Winter Meeting Biomedical Devices Committee Inaugural Meeting In San Francisco Healthcare Sector: Reality Check: What Has Pharma Really Been Paying For Alliances? Mass Collaboration In Licensing: Is Wikinomics For You? LES Winter Meeting: Supreme Court Ruling Creates "Buzz" At Winter Meeting LES Local Chapter Minnesota: A Member Friendly Chapter Julius Vida Honored With Mentor Award Microsoft VP Issues A Call To Arms For New Voices In The IP Reform Debate PTO is calling... LES Annual Meeting: Change And The New Deal LES Calendar of Events		PTO is calling... The Patent and Trademark Office needs your help. They are about to open up the process of reviewing patents to the world's favorite forum: the Internet. This pilot project by the PTO will post patent applications on the Web and invite comments. It will use a community rating system to push the most respected comments to the top of the file. The test is a first for the federal government and resembles one used by Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia created by its users (see book review). Why the sudden shift? Last year PTO's 4,000 examiners completed a record 332,000 applications. A hot topic at recent LES meetings, this tremendous workload pushes the length of time to get a patent out to 5 years for many. Sources: www.idsa.org/news and www.washingtonpost.com
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