November 17, 2008 - A new company by the name of Article One Partners, LLC (www.ArticleOnePartners.com) launched today, building a global community that will work to legitimize the validity of patents through citizen review. The community members, or Advisors as Article One calls them, have an opportunity to send in previously hard to find evidence of validity for high profile patents. By tapping the unique knowledge and referral networks of its Advisors, publicly available evidence, or prior art as it’s known in the legal community, can be discovered. Article One analyzes the prior art to determine whether it can show patents to be legitimized or invalid. If Article One forms an opinion that patents are invalid, Advisors earn up to U.S. $50,000, with $1,000,000 total being offered for launch.

Advisors who actively build the community also earn premium compensation in Article One’s Profit Sharing Plan of about five percent (5%) of the company’s net annual profit. The result is a highly-rewarded community providing a citizen’s review of U.S. patents to justify monopoly pricing for true innovation and energize U.S. patent reform.

“The United States Patent Office does high quality work, but its resources are limited to fully research the global pool of evidence used to determine patent validity,” said Cheryl Milone, founder of Article One Partners. “The community of Article One Partners includes Advisors worldwide who have knowledge of science and technology and can uncover new evidence. This evidence adds a crucial level of review to a patent system in need of reform to improve patent quality.”

Article One rewards Advisors for the true value of their research and contributions to the community—what they know and even who they know for referrals. The Article One Patent Studies explore high profile patents impacting the marketplace, and often tied up in costly litigation.

The business model of Article One executes on the value of the research, which can be sold directly to parties interested in the subject patent, or used to execute market trades based upon expert opinions drawn from the research. This self-supporting revenue model provides for the significant bonuses of up to $50,000 for specific prior art found, and rewards the community through a powerful Profit Sharing Plan compensating all members who actively participate and build the Advisor community.

“A patent is a government-granted right that enables patent holders to prevent competition for about 16-18 years, unless the patent is invalidated before it expires,” said Scott Locke, partner at New York law firm Kalow & Springut LLP, and an adjunct professor of Law. “By pooling the collective knowledge of a global community to uncover prior art, Article One Partners is harnessing resources to which the U.S. Patent Office does not have ready access to, and searching for additional prior art not considered by the Patent Office. This provides another check on whether a claimed invention was truly worthy of a patent. Article One is providing both the venue and the incentive to facilitate greater involvement of the private sector.”

Interestingly, Article One also directly supports other reform efforts, including early review of pending applications submitted to the U.S. Patent Office. Article One joins the U.S. Patent Office and Congress in endorsing the important work of www.peertopatent.org, which requests from the public prior art to forward to the Patent Office for consideration in granting new patents. Article One encourages Advisors to participate in public-sector reform, offering Profit Sharing on www.articleonepartners.com when Advisors provide prior art that is accepted by www.peertopatent.org for submission to the Patent Office.

Strong Patents Drive True Innovation

The Article One Partners community strives to restore the patent system to its original intent of granting exclusive rights for true innovation, while promoting the progress of science and technology through open sharing of invention. To this goal, every patent that can be invalidated should be invalidated.

Through discovering prior art, Article One provides evidence to the market to potentially reduce unfair monopolies and overly broad patents. Patent claims for unique innovations are intrinsically strengthened when our Advisors’ comprehensive global search does not uncover prior art. Stronger patents enable the inventor community to commercialize their inventions with greater confidence. Reducing invalid patents encourages open sharing of the science and technology that drives innovation and new research opportunities.

Earn Compensation for the Value of your Knowledge

• WHO CAN JOIN – All types of people with an interest in science or technology can participate if legally eligible. Members can join from anywhere in the world and from every type of industry and specialty: Engineers; Hobbyists; Academics; Scientists; Students; Professionals; Retirees; Experts and more.

• WHAT TO LOOK FOR – Advisors have an opportunity to review Patent Studies posted on www.articleonepartners.com, and to submit relevant prior art (evidence of publicly available information predating a patent’s invention, which teaches or renders obvious the patent claims).

• WHERE PRIOR ART IS FOUND – Prior art knowledge and evidence may come from published content anywhere in the world and in any language. This includes: previous patents; news or academic publications; non-digitized documents such as textbooks; or any public document provided to others, including conference or academic papers and business materials. Prior art is often found in documents tucked away in a file cabinet years ago, or in the back corner of a library.

To join as an Advisor, or learn more about Article One Partners and prior art searching, visit www.ArticleOnePartners.com