The Obama administration recently announced a renewal of Patents for Humanity, a USPTO program promoting the use of patented technologies to address worldwide humanitarian needs. Patents for Humanity is part of the President’s program to strengthen the patent system and to promote innovation by recognizing patent owners and licensees who using their patented technology to improve global health and living standards for the less fortunate. In addition to public recognition for their contribution to humanitarian needs, the winners will receive an acceleration certificate that gives expedited processing of select matters (e.g. moving patent re-examination proceedings to the front of the queue) before the USPTO.
The first Patents for Humanity was implemented in February 2012 as part of an initiative to solve long-standing development challenges. Participants described in their applications how they’ve used their patented technology or product to address humanitarian issues (defined as issues “significantly affecting the public health or quality of life of an impoverished population”) in one of the four categories: medical technology, food and nutrition, clean technology and information technology. The first 1,000 applications that met the competition requirements were considered, and the applications were independently reviewed by three judges selected from academia for their expertise in medicine, law, science, engineering, public policy, or a related field. The judging process applied three neutrality principles – technology-neutral, geographically-neutral, and financially-neutral. The program considered inventions from any field of technology that met the competition criteria. The targeted impoverished population may be located anywhere in the world. And any means of getting technology to those in need may qualify without regard to financial consideration. Lastly, the program considered the diversity of contributions in order to highlight global humanitarian contributions across all types of technology, organizations, and practices.
The 2012-2013 program recognized 10 winners and 6 honorable mentions. The medical technology category was divided into a category for medicine & vaccines and a category for diagnostics & devices. The winners of the pilot program include research institutions like University of California, Berkeley and industry leaders, such as Microsoft and Proctor & Gamble. USPTO expects to open applications for the 2014 Patents for Humanity program in April. The latest USPTO announcement states that the 2014 program will be structured similarly to the pilot program that was introduced in 2012, with a few changes based on the feedback from the pilot program.