Patent Crowdbusting: Q&A with Cheryl Milone of Article One Partners
In 1998, patent attorney Cheryl Milone had an idea: create a business that would make money by debunking patents using the wisdom of crowds. Unfortunately for her, Jeff Bezos and Tim O'Reilly got there first with BountyQuest. Milone went to work for that company for a year, though it eventually closed down. (Perhaps trying to invalidate Amazon's one-click patent didn't engender good will from Bezos.) A few years and additional boutique patent law firm experience later, Milone thought the idea was still sound and possibly facing a more receptive environment. Raising money from private investors, she started Article One Partners, using a crowdsourcing and profit-sharing model to get people to search for prior art and a multi-leg approach to making the money to pay expenses and, ultimately, to share. I spoke with her about Article One and its first announced award of $50,000 for prior art.