Why are we doing this?

Patexia is trying to solicit patents from a variety of assignees with claim language that describe a particular invention.

Think of yourself as a personal patent shopper. We need your help to find the patents that meet specific criteria.

What’s the ideal submission?

An ideal submission will include:

multiple patents from different assignees that are not expired or abandoned
patents with a filing date in a specific date range
explained answers using only the claims from your submitted patents
proof that the claims describe the particular invention described in our questions within the same independent or a subsequent dependent claim

Specifically:

a patent that is not expired or abandoned means that the assignee has paid the patent’s maintenance fees
an assignee is the current owner of the patent
you can do a quick check for the paid status and the original assignee on Google Patents

What’s the right date?

We’re looking for patents that have an effective filing date between a very specific range. Anything too early, the patent is too close to being expired (or already is expired) to be useful for us. Anything too late, the patent is too new for our needs.

Here’s a great USPTO flowchart to help you figure out the effective filing date for a patent.

How do I get $?

For Patent Mining contests, we will use a multiple sub-contest prize pool distribution where:

we award winners/runners up and money based on the patent submitted
you can earn money for each patent that is amongst the top ranked in the entire Contest
you can earn money for submitting the most number of top ranked patents

You are competing with your peers in submitting:

the best ranked patent(s) in the entire Contest
the best explanation for each top ranked patent(s)
the most number of top ranked patents

Addition Reading

From the Blog: How to Submit Multiple References in a Contest