Good morning, Senator (or should I say "President-elect"?), and congratulations. You talked during your campaign about using the Internet to engage with regular folks, and surely you did. So did your opponent. The last time I checked, the two of you had amassed about two million friends between you on Facebook and MySpace, and another few hundred thousand followers on Twitter and YouTube.
As a patent agent and active participant in Peer to Patent, I can say that this “crowdsourcing” approach to citizen government relations has merit. There’s a lot more work to be done, however. One of the challenges for the creative patent agent is to find a way to write a patent application that can be reviewed equally well by two very different audiences, the Peer- to-Patent reviewers, and USPTO patent examiners. This is no small feat, but for those that can master it, dramatically higher quality patents and much more efficient patent examination should result.
Stay up to date on the latest news of the future of science and technology from your iPhone with full articles, images and offline viewing
Featuring every article from the magazine and website, plus links from around the Web. Also see our PopSci DIY feed
Share links with friends, comment on stories and more
In our December issue, Popular Science names the 100 best innovations of the year: bombproof wallpaper, self-parking cars, the fastest helicopter, and 97 more. Plus inventor profiles and videos.
Check out the best of what's new here.