The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) announced that a pilot program involving public review of patent applications over the Internet has helped it quickly reject claims that are obvious or not novel in more than a quarter of the pilot’s patent applications.

The USPTO has issued non-final rejections of at least one claim in five out of the first 19 patent applications in the so-called Peer-to-Patent pilot program, which it launched last June with New York Law School.