Fix Patent Number Tagging system or abandon it

Question

As per What is the rationale for having the patent number as a tag? and Can patents be searchable by number? questions about specific patents should be tagged with USXXXXXXX

There are at least two problems with this

• Currently the privileges are set at the beta level. If this ever changes you'll have to have 300 rep in order to add a new tag which means as the site's tagging won't work for new users as Ben Brocka noted

• You can't do wildcard searches like US* because wildcard searches require at least 4 characters. This makes it difficult to find new Patent questions.

Please either remove these restrictions for [USXXXXX] tags or create a new field to hold the patent number.

Answer 1

Right now we are keeping the reputation requirements at beta levels so that new users can create tags. Once we come out of beta, we have several options to assure that new users will be able to post prior art requests.

So while we haven't decided which option will work best, rest assured that, yes, this is already status-planned.

Oh, and prior art searches should be labeled prior-art.