A new scheme to manage intellectual property

In his article "A patent improvement" (The Economist, Sep 6th 2007, http://www.economist.com/science/tq/displaystory.cfm?story_id=9719020), Andy Oram, editor at O'Reilly Media, writes : "The number of applications has soared in recent years, but patent offices have been unable to keep up—resulting in huge backlogs and lengthy delays. Standards have slipped and in America the number of lawsuits over contested patents has shot up (see chart below ). In an attempt to fix these problems, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), Britain's Intellectual Property Office (IPO) and the European Patent Office are evaluating a radical change: opening the process up to internet-based collaboration". The project is called "Peer to Patent", those who want to participate can go to this web site : http://www.peertopatent.org/