From The Linux Foundation

History

In early December 2005, the USPTO met with members of the Open Source community and industry to discuss ways in which they could collaborate to improve the quality of patents, including software patents.

One of the initiatives explored involved improving accessibility by patent examiners and others to electronically published source code and its related documentation as a source of prior art. That initiative, dubbed the "Open Source as Prior Art Initiative," involves work and development in several different areas, including the following:

• Establishing electronic publication practices that any software author can use to ensure their source code can be used as prior art.
• Creating search mechanisms and interfaces that allow patent examiners and others to more easily locate relevant electronically published source code and its related documentation.
• Developing a "taxonomy" or "tagging" system that can be used by software developers, patent examiners and others to describe and help locate relevant source code and documentation.

The USPTO has agreed to pursue all of the initiatives discussed at that meeting, including the Open Source as Prior Art Initiative.