$50,000 USPTO Algorithm Challenge

About the Challenge

In this contest all participants will compete in teams of two, working together over the course of one month to develop solutions and deliver an algorithm that can automatically identify and locate specific elements within patent documents. This experimental contest format is part of TopCoder’s ongoing partnership with the Harvard-NASA Tournament lab to better understand how contests can be used to solve complex computational problems in the US federal government. More details as well as a training dataset of greater than 200 manually labeled patents will be made available at the start of the contest. Code submissions will be scored automatically.

Important: To participate, entrants are required to register for the contest between 11/30/2011 and 12/05/2011.

Prizes ($50,000 + T-Shirts)

Up to $50,000 total prizes will be distributed to contest winners.

$15,000 in grand prizes for the contest will be distributed as follows:

• $10,000 to the first place team
• $5,000 to the second place team

In addition to the grand prizes, $35,000 will be distributed in the form of room prizes to the winners in virtual competition rooms. We will aim to have 20 teams in each competition room but actual room size and the number of rooms may vary depending on contest registration. Prizes will be given to the top-two scoring teams in each competition room (75% and 25% of room prize). The number of rooms and room sizes will be announced after registration closes and prior to the competition start on December 16th 2011.

In addition to the prizes listed above, all active competitors will be awarded a special, limited-edition, NASA Tournament Lab t-shirt.

Overall Schedule:
Registration Opens: 11/30/2011 (13:00 UTC -5)
Registration Closes: 12/05/2011 (13:00 UTC -5)
Teams will be Announced: 12/13/2011
Contest Start Date: 12/16/2011 (13:00 UTC -5)
Contest End Date: 01/16/2012 (13:00 UTC -5)
Winner Announced: Estimated: 02/16/2012

Register for the competition now and read all about the details in the provided link.