[hurch]

It can work but both finders and graders would definitely need to get some reasonable education beforehand. Something like a code academy/treehouse of IP would be the go. Also, the amount of time it would take/amount each gamer would need to or be willing to commit to get decent results would be interesting. Back at uni in an "business model/startup" course, we had to complete an assignment essentially doing what your suggesting. We had had 6-8hrs of prior classes and a fair bit of course reading (at least 4hrs if you did all). We all got a brief for the technology we had to investigate which was an device for completing eye surgery surgery! Everyone found at least 10+ patents that could have been seen as prior art as there was competitors in that space (some of which was found by others, some of which was totally misunderstood and crap) - In the end, no one found anything new that would have impacted the new tech and our lecturer (a VC) was very happy with the additional free research! He went on to use those who got the best grades for some paid work - a good way to outsource any initial research his firm had to do on potential investments