Quick Hit: Peer Patenting for Technology

I've been following the "patents are bad" meme on the web/blogosphere and this "Peer to Patent" is an interesting idea.

Basically, the crux, as I understand it, is that patents hamper innovation and/or they do a poor of indicating new innovation and/or they are used in bad ways (ala Eolas suite of Microsoft and the non user-friendly browser behavior resulting from it).

I'll revisit this idea in the future but Peer reviewed patents sounds interesting - particularly if it gets some serious backing (the videos suggest some serious thinkers in the tech space: Tim O'Reilly; Todd Dickinson - IP Counsel for GE; and Curt Rose - Assistant General Counsel for HP) - it could become a defacto standard. Kudos for working with the USPTO.

Link: http://www.peertopatent.org/

Update: I ran across the EFF explaining why they like Peer to Patent: it stops trivial patents like this drag and drop patent from Yahoo.