America Invents Act

I hope that you have already heard about the America Invents Act, but if not, you should get yourself up to speed on this potential radical change to US Patent law. The House and Senate have both passed substantially similar legislation and if the bills are reconciled, the President has indicated that he would sign the resulting legislation.

The most radical change is the move from a first-to-invent system to a first-to-file system such as is found in other countries. A great summary of the legislation and a discussion of potential effects is found in this Wikipedia article.

One interesting excerpt is the following: "The patent reform bill of 2007, which the current bill closely resembles, was analyzed by the Deputy Director of IP division of Beijing High People's Court, Senior Judge, and he found that that the bill "... is friendlier to the infringers than to the patentees in general as it will make the patent less reliable, easier to be challenged and cheaper to be infringed. It is not bad news for developing countries which have fewer patents. Many of the Chinese companies are not patent owners in the U.S. market and their products are often excluded from the market because of patent infringement accusations. This bill will give the companies from developing countries more freedom and flexibility to challenge the relative US patent for doing business in US and make it less costly to infringe."

Sound scary to you? Please read up and comment with your thoughts on this change to the patent law.