Public participation in patent examination

The involvement of the public in patent examination is used in some forms to help identifying relevant prior art and, more generally, to help assessing whether patent applications and inventions meet the requirements of patent law, such as novelty, inventive step or non-obviousness, and sufficiency of disclosure. == Rationale == The rationale for public participation in patent-application reviews is that knowledgeable persons in fields that are relevant to a particular patent application will provide useful information to patent examiners if the proper forum is provided.

Source: Wikipedia — Public participation in patent examination (CC BY-SA 4.0)