A Patent Study is a listing of a patent or patents whose validity we seek to assess with the help of the AOP Advisor community. It's an invitation to all AOP Advisors to submit evidence of patent validity ? called "prior art" ? in exchange for a Patent Study Reward of up to $50,000.

Each Patent Study contains the following:

• Detailed description of the patent, or patents, in question (an individual Patent Study can contain multiple patents).
• Latest Date for Prior Art: the date by which your prior art must be publicly known or published.
• Expiration date: the date the Patent Study closes; all prior art must be submitted by this date.
• General list of criteria for winning part or all of the Patent Study Reward.

If you find prior art that can challenge a patent featured in a Patent Study, we urge you to respond to the Patent Study by promptly submitting your evidence.

Click here to find out how to respond to a study.

Click here to read the list of our Advisor Tips.

How AOP calculates Patent Study Rewards

• We allocate up to $50,000 in rewards for each Patent Study.   
• The full reward is given to a single Advisor if the following applies: you must be the first to submit the Primary Prior Art reference or references that form the basis for a formal opinion of invalidity of the patents in the Patent Study.
• If multiple prior art references are combined to form the basis for a formal opinion of patent invalidity, Article One pays the full reward, but divides it among the Advisors who sent in Invalidating Prior Art: 70% (up to $35,000) goes to the first Advisor to submit Invalidating Prior Art, and the remainder (up to $15,000) is awarded to the first Advisors to send in Primary or Secondary Invalidating Prior Art (the level of relevance is determined by Article One at its sole discretion).
• If the Patent Study includes multiple patents, each of the patents must receive prior art which can show the patent to be invalid in the opinion of Article One for payment of the Reward.  However, for a Patent Study with multiple patents, if any of the patents are determined in the opinion of Article One to be invalid, then Article One will attempt to sell all or part of the collection.  
• Patent Study Rewards are governed by the Compensation Agreement, please refer to it for details.  

Each relevant submission is a winner

As soon as you submit, AOP decides whether your prior art is (1) RELEVANT: i.e. related to the technology of the Patent Study and (2) NEW: i.e. not mentioned in the existing body of prior art for the patent(s) in question that ARTICLE ONE PARTNERS provides in each Patent Study. New relevant submissions earn you 5 Advisor Points ? or 25 Advisor Points if you're the first to submit a prior art reference.

?How many Advisor Points is my prior art worth??

AOP analyzes each prior art submission to determine its relevance to the Patent Study and assigns one of five levels. The level will determine how many Advisor Points your submission is worth.

Now browse our Patent Studies and choose one to respond to. We're keeping our fingers crossed for you.