The REGNET research project proposes to develop an information infrastructure to enhance the access, retrieval and transparency of government regulations, in particular in the area of patents. Almost all manufacturing and engineered products as well as the processes involved in inventing and producing such products need to comply with regulatory requirements. Patent laws and related issues are complex and voluminous, and can be disproportionately burdensome, hindering technological and business innovations, particularly to small businesses. Information technology (IT) has the potential to mitigate and help solve many of these complicated issues and enhance public understanding.
Intellectual Merit
Government regulations are now available online. However, most of current online portals are primarily designed for displaying the information and are difficult to be used for further processing. The information service infrastructure proposed for REGNET includes repositories as a base and, more importantly, tools to locate, merge, compare, and analyze the information. This service infrastructure will exploit in an intelligent way the communication and computational resources that are now widely available to the public. Seven tasks are planned: (1) textual parsing and storage, (2) semi-structured, indexed storage, (3) means to resolve semantic ambiguities, (4) cross-referencing appropriate for automated retrieval of relevant documents, (5) comparative analysis of related regulatory documents, (6) on-line compliance assistance and checking of governmental regulations, and (7) needs assessment and impact analysis. New and innovative search and analysis techniques will be developed to help disseminate regulatory data and allow finding and comparing multiple sources of related legal and regulatory information.
Broad Impacts
IT systems for legal and regulatory purposes are being rapidly developed. The social and legal impacts of such online regulation systems and compliance assistance tools as well as their effects on the regulatory process will be studied.
