Journal editors don't have time to personally review every submitted manuscript, yet that peer review process is relatively successful. Journals generally do no

Journal editors don't have time to personally review every submitted manuscript, yet that peer review process is relatively successful. Journals generally do not compensate reviewers (though I have been compensated for reviewing book proposals---in the form of my choice of free book from the publisher). In any case, what if the patent examiner selected a small number of experts in the specific field and sent the proposal out for review, along with some compensation for quality reviews (positive or negative). A senior USPTO examiner makes on the order of $100k/year (http://usptocareers.gov/Pages/Misc/SalaryRates.aspx http://usptocareers.gov/Pages/Misc/SalaryRates.aspx) and spends 1-3 days reviewing each application. After overhead, that's more than $500-$1500 in personnel expenses per patent. What if, after an initial filter, the application was sent to three experts at $200 each. It seems like this could keep the costs similar to what they are now, but dramatically reduced the number of false negatives for prior art.