"Every Patent Is a Double-Edged Sword"

Former patent attorney Charles H. Cella is something of a zealot. He believes the exponential growth in patent filings is causing an overextended U.S. Patent & Trademark Office (PTO) to grant an increasing number of patents that are far too broad or fail to make significant advances in technology. So he set out to find a way to help overturn patents of the sort that he believes should never have been issued. With a group of investors that includes Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon.com, and Internet publisher Tim O'Reilly, Cella formed a Boston-based dot-com called BountyQuest that offers cash rewards of $10,000 or more to individuals who uncover "prior art" that can be used in a patent challenge.

They hope to garner a share of the billions that are spent each year by companies defending themselves against costly patent-infringement lawsuits. The concept, says Cella, is "market-based reform." After just three months, www.BountyQuest.com recently trumpeted four rewards to bounty hunters who ferreted out information that might help invalidate 4 of the 19 initial patents posted to the Web site.