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Manager   •   almost 11 years ago

$500 Challenge - LexHacks 2015 - Michigan State University College of Law, Intellectual Property, Information, and Communications Law Program (IPIC)

Michigan State University College of Law, Intellectual Property, Information, and Communications Law Program (IPIC)

Adam Candeub, Director

LexHacks Legal Hackathon Challenge Prize: $500

In our information economy, the role of intellectual property is essential to protect innovation. Properly understanding intellectual property regimes informs better business plans and fuels success in entrepreneurial activity of all sorts. In particular, patents play a central role in protecting prized intellectual property that often can serve as launch pads for successful businesses.

Yet, the workings of the intellectual property system are often painfully opaque. Legal experts who can navigate the system and provide excellent information to their clients of course exist, but they come at a price. We seek to create an automated tool or application that will provide useful data for entrepreneurs and others interested in incorporating new intellectual property into their business plans and forecasts but who might lack the resources to obtain legal counsel.

Specifically, we seek an automated tool or application that will search Google patents (www.google.com/patents) and provide data for any class and subclass of patent. We do not have specifications for the precise data or data format this tool or application must provide. But, at the very least, the tool or application must provide for each patent subclass:

1. The average rate of first review rejection;

2. The average length of time until granting the patent;

3. A ranking of the examiners within each subclass for their average rate of first review rejection as well

Email Address for Challenge Questions: Candeub@law.msu.edu

To learn more about the Michigan State University College of Law, Intellectual Property, Information, and Communications Law Program (IPIC), visit: http://www.law.msu.edu/ipic/program.html

  • 3 comments

  •   •   almost 11 years ago

    what's the prefered language to do this? is this going to be a webapp or just a server side thing?

  •   •   almost 11 years ago

    Hi Xiao! Thanks for your interest . . .. No preference on language. A web app would be great, but not required. Simple a website that responds to queries would do the trick. Again, we just want a tool that average people can use easily . .. . the easier to use, the better. Does that help?

  •   •   almost 11 years ago

    to make it easy, that's the hardest part isn't it

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