Crowdsourcing the search for prior art in software patents

On IRC, someone pointed out this blog post by Joel Spolsky, wherein he talks of 'Ask Patents', a Stack Exchange site set up after a change of law to allow the public to submit prior art for patent applications.

It's not a perfect solution. If the patent office can't find enough people willing to do this kind of boring search work while being paid for it, I'm not sure they'll find enough people willing to do this kind of boring search work in their free time. But it's certainly a step in the right direction.