Inventors, like high school students, continue to use Wikipedia despite stern warnings

Have a look at blogger and patent librarian extraordinaire Michael White's post about the patent examining process and applicants' use of Wikipedia.

Wikipedia's open editorial policy means that its content changes constantly. This makes it a great source for, say, trivia about an episode of the Simpsons. For a legal citation, however, permanence and authority are pretty important. White notes in his post that despite its questionable reliability, the number of patents citing the venerable Wiki has grown steadily over the past five years.

In other news, I sometimes use Google News Search to scan the Web for intellectual property news. Sometimes I get gems like this.