April 08 press release from "peer to patent"

The first non-final rejection by the USPTO in the "peer to patent" program pertained to a rejection of a claim of an HP patent based on prior art of an IBM employee (the second non-final rejection pertained to a claim of an IBM patent )

In sending the program’s first non-final rejection, the USPTO examiner used prior art and commentary submitted by Steven Pearson, a senior software engineer at IBM, to reject claims of an HP application. The second non-final rejection relied upon prior art and commentary submitted by Rob Cameron, a Professor of Computer Science at Simon Fraser University, to reject claims of an IBM application. As a result, Pearson and Cameron have been awarded the title “prior artist” on the pilot Web site.

The release also noted:

Because the USPTO agreed to examine patent applications in the pilot ahead of other applications, the time between application filing and the onset of examination shrank from four to two years.