BountyQuest is in a state of high excitement right now.
Posters usually list both the patent number and a description of the art they want to invalidate.
The first Hunter to submit prior art that meets the Poster s criteria wins the bounty. A bounty s minimum posting time is 2 months, so late December was the soonest that BountyQuest could announce the first winners. I found it interesting that, although both Posters and Hunters are guaranteed anonymity unless they give written permission to reveal their identities, all but one of the initial bounty winners have gone public. Also interesting, and tending to bear out Cella s opinion on where the prior art would come from, is that none of the first five winners is a patent-information specialist. All five work in the areas in which the bounties were posted, and three of them submitted their own or their companies publications.