I just read about the site's mission against frivolous software patent claims. I'm really intrigued by the idea and I wanted to know how much of an impact it has had since its inception. I wasn't able to find any statistics, like % of software patents denied after being discussed on Ask Patents, or anything like that. I would certainly be willing to donate my time for this cause if that would actually change the world in a small way. I'm sure many other people feel the same way.
2 Answers
At least 2 or 3 patents have been rejected and/or claims modified due to prior art searches performed by Ask Patents.SE. You can view examples of this at the following link, and then sort by votes: https://patents.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/prior-art-request
While this may not seem like a large number in the larger number of patents being approved, it shows that this community can affect change in patent status.
answered Jul 8, 2016 at 4:55
While the contributors to this site know a lot about patents, they aren't necessarily experts in the technical field of prior art requests. What might be useful would be to take acceptable prior art requests and then in some way link them to other specific StackExchange sites where technical experts reside. Ask Patents could vet the question, edit it and decide on which (if any) StackExchange site is appropriate.
