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A new site for digging into prior art from Stack Exchange. Will it result in more patents being overturned? I doubt it. Certainly prior art exists for this type of effort. Back in 2000, O’Reilly launched a site called BountyQuest with similar goals. Tim O’Reilly explained why the site never worked out in 2003.

Generally speaking, I’m not convinced that the patent problem can be solved by digging up prior art like this. Most of the time when I see a patent claim, I can think of products that covered similar territory before the patent in question was filed. I’m sure that defense attorneys and their consultants can do the same.