Thar's Gold in That Thar Prior Art!

From Slashdot comes this report of Article One Partners, a website that aims to encourage de-tech-tives (yes, I'm proud of that one) to locate and submit patent-invalidating prior art. $50,000 could be your reward, says the site, for doing so.

It's an interesting approach, but not a new one; BountyQuest did something similar (link is to Internet Archive cache) back in the 2000-2003 timeframe with a reward-driven effort to invalidate, among others, the Amazon one-click patent. BountyQuest didn't revolutionize prior art disclosure, and I'm not going to hold my breath on this one.

Update: Ars Technica is all over this one -- it appears Article One's founder has applied for a patent on some of the techniques used on the site. Now there's some good de-tech-tive work!