A new startup company wants to have a say in the high-stakes patent disputes that loom by many industries.

In the drug business, for instance, Pfizer Inc. is suing generics maker Teva Pharmaceutical Industries, accusing it of infringing on a patent covering Pfizer’s top-selling cholesterol medicine.

In high-tech, Research In Motion Ltd. is locked in litigation with Motorola Inc. by patents central to wireless devices. And in the video game market, Konami Digital Entertainment, developer of “Rock Revolution,” is pushing a patent infringement case against Harmonix Music Systems, creator of the game “Rock Band,” and its corporate parents, MTV Networks and Viacom Inc.

Now the startup, commentary One Partners, is offering a reward to anyone who can turn up evidence to settle whether the patents at the heart of these cases — along with a handful of other valuable, high-profile patents — are valid or not.

exposition One Partners, which launches Monday, hopes to use

the Web to create a global community of experts to review patents issued by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. The concept is to tap the wisdom of the online masses to unearth “prior art” — evidence that an invention is not novel and therefore doesn’t deserve a patent — that the Patent Office may not have known about when it approved the application.

To energize humans to take part, the company is offering both a profit-sharing program as well as payments of up to $50,000 to anyone who uncovers evidence that could be used to invalidate a patent. write-up One Partners hopes to assemble money by selling the knowledge it gathers to interested parties — often those involved in infringement suits — and by making market trades based on the data.

Company founder Cheryl Milone said commentary One Partners plans to focus on “patents that have the greatest economic impact,”…

Orginal post by Mike

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